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Old English Local Courts And The Movement For Their Reform, Arthur Lyon Cross

Michigan Law Review

The first Reform Bill of 1832 was at once a symptom and a further cause of momentous changes in English institutions, political and legal, to say nothing of social and ecclesiastical. Many of these were brought about as the result of patient and competent investigations of royal commissions which, though not unknown before the third decade of the nineteenth century, were active to an extent hitherto unheard of during that notable epoch of reform. While a few men of law were among the forward spirits, the bulk of the advance guard were laymen. As a rule judges, barristers and attorneys …