Law Commons^™

Archival Research In The History Of The Law: A User's Perspective, Douglas Hay

Articles & Book Chapters

Legal history and the social history of law have become very active fields of research in Britain, the United States, and Canada in the past ten years. Moreover, they have begun to affect each other, so that social historians are now much more sensitive to doctrinal changes, shifts in legal rules, and legal concepts, while legal historians increasingly appreciate that explaining legal change – or the lack of it – may require extensive research outside the law library. In short, lawyers and historians are beginning to meet not only in law libraries, but also in archives. And, like all users, …