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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Lawyers And Biblical Prophets, Thomas L. Shaffer Nov 2016

Lawyers And Biblical Prophets, Thomas L. Shaffer

Thomas L. Shaffer

This is part of a broader exploration of the suggestion that the biblical prophets-Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Nathan, and the others-are sources of ethical reflection and moral example for modern American lawyers. The suggestion appears to be unusual; I am not sure why. The Prophets were, more than anything else, lawyers-as their successors, the Rabbis of the Talmud, were. They were neither teachers nor bureaucrats, not elected officials or priests or preachers. And the comparison is not an ancient curiosity: Much of what admirable lawyer-heroes have done in modern America has been prophetic in the biblical sense-that is, what they …


The Letter Of Richard Wyche: An Interrogation Narrative, Christopher G. Bradley Aug 2016

The Letter Of Richard Wyche: An Interrogation Narrative, Christopher G. Bradley

Christopher Bradley

This is a translation, with introduction, of the Letter of Richard Wyche—one of only two heresy interrogation narratives from medieval England written from the perspective of the accused heretic. The Letter is an autobiographical account of Richard Wyche’s interrogation, in 1402-1403, at the hands of church officials. Wyche originally composed the Letter in (Middle) English but it survives only in a Latin translation, alongside other forbidden texts in a manuscript now in Prague. Wyche wrote and covertly sent away this Letter to an audience of intimates sympathetic to the cause (the so-called Wycliffite or Lollard heresy) before his interrogations ended. …