Legal History Commons^™

English Common Law In Virgina, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

By statute the common law of England is the basis of the common law of modern Virginia. This reception statute refers to the customary, unwritten law of the kingdom of England, but only that part which was general and common to all parts of England. That the English common law is the foundation of the law of Virginia is a matter not merely of a modern statute but also of history and reason.

The Use Of Roman Law In Virginia Courts, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

By statute, the courts of Virginia are required to decide cases according to the principles of the English common law. However, they are not forbidden to resort to any other legal system where the common law of England is silent. Moreover, when the English courts themselves have no English law on a particular point, they often look to the Roman law in its ancient or its current form for guidance. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for Virginia courts to do likewise, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in fact, they did. The purpose of this essay is to consider …

Legal Growth Through Evolution: Comment On Puritan Revolution And English Law, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

Professor Harold Berman has presented the fascinating thesis that a people's religion influences their laws and that the Puritan religious revolution of seventeenth century England introduced Calvinist ideas into Anglo-American jurisprudence. I fully agree with Professor Berman's observations that religious beliefs and a sense of moral obligation to others are some of the motivations of, or at least influences upon, legal growth. Economic aggrandizement is not the only motivation of the human race. Religion has had a direct effect upon social and political institutions.

The Abolition Of The Forms Of Action In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The common law procedure for initiating actions at law in the English courts required a plaintiff to obtain a writ invoking the jurisdiction of the court and to file a declaration setting forth the facts that justified instigation of the suit and established the cause of the action. This clumsy and archaic system of litigation was abolished by a single chop of the legislative guillotine in New York in 1848. England followed suit in 1875, and the United States federal courts in 1938. Writs and declarations were replaced by simple forms which were copied from the practice of the equity …

The Court Of Exchequer Comes Of Age, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The Exchequer was well established as a court of law in the thirteenth century. For the next three hundred years, the Exchequer court seems to have carried out its duties without much change in function or status. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the judicial business of the Exchequer amounted to about 200 cases per year as compared with about 2500 in the court of King's Bench and 10,000 in the Common Pleas. However, during the middle period of the reign of Henry VIII, the first signs of growth since the thirteenth century appeared. This expansion of the court …

Das Profil Des Juristen In Der Europiiischen Tradition, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

A book review on, Das Profil des Juristen in der europiiischen Tradition, by Klaus Luig and Detlef Liebs, eds.,

Review On Commentaries On The Laws Of England: A Facsimile Of The First Edition Of 1765-1769, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

A book review on, Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765-1769, by W. Blackstone.

Discovery Of Penalites, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this essay is to discuss some aspects of the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination. It will consider first what can not be and then what can be discovered by the common law of England before 1776, when the first republican constitution of Virginia was promulgated. Finally, the developments in Virginia and federal practice will be dealt with.

The Jury As A Source Of Reasonable Search And Seizure Law, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

The definition of a reasonable search has bedeviled the United States Supreme Court for some ninety years. Formal logic or legal reasoning assists the Court in tracing premise to conclusion, but does not alone suggest the initial premise. The Court's difficulty in fourth amendment cases, in general, lies in identifying the premise-the fundamental value which is embodied in this constitutional guarantee. The Court has recognized that this fundamental value, whatever it is, has an origin outside the language of the amendment, and the Court has considered sources such as history, popular consensus, natural law, and utilitarian balancing to find this …

Notes On Virginia Civil Procedure, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

This book is an outline of the introductory course on Virginia civil procedure which the author teaches at University of Richmond. The purpose of this publication is to give the students an introduction to the subject which can be read prior to the classroom discussion. It is a very brief sketch of the subject, but there are references in the footnotes to cases and statutes or to secondary works which give case references. The scope of my course and of this book excludes all federal law, criminal law and habeas corpus, evidence, creditors' rights, and probate proceedings; these matters are …

The History Of Legal Education In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

Many methods of legal education have been used over the years. Each has its strengths and its weaknesses. The study of the past is instructive and useful in showing both the good and bad goals and methods. We must cultivate the good and uproot the bad. This study suggests that there has always been progress, slow but constant improvement. The teaching of law is vital to the administration of justice, a noble cause. The continuing challenge is ever to strive for the improvement thereof.

Clinical Education-A Golden Dancer?, W. Wade Berryhill

Law Faculty Publications

Clinical education is acclaimed by its advocates to be the salvation of the wayward and sick soul of the legal profession. Others, the staunch defenders of the more traditional academic methods, believing it to be nothing more than spit and sealing wax, shake their heads and murmur "is nothing sacred?" The purpose of this paper is to take a good "look behind the paint" of clinical education.

Intellectual Life In The Colonial South, 1585-1763, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

A book review on, Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1763, by Richard Beale Davis.

Nicholas Bacon: The Making Of A Tudor Statesman, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

A book review on Nicholas Bacon: The Making of a Tudor Statesman by Robert Tittler.

The Reports Of Charles Lee And John Brown, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The reports of Virginia cases from 1784 to 1794 compiled by Charles Lee and those of John Brown, which cover the period 1791 to 1799 in the Virginia Court of Appeals, are published for the first time here. Many of the cases in Lee's Reports and some in Brown's Reports have not been reported elsewhere, and the others supplement the rather brief case reports made by Bushrod Washington and Daniel Call. During the period of these reports, the judges of the court of appeals usually gave their opinions immediately after the attorneys had concluded their arguments; in the other cases …

The Equity Side Of The Exchequer, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this book is to place the equity side of the exchequer into its historical, institutional, and legal perspective. It is to discover its administrative procedures arid to determine how far its judicial procedures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the same as those of the other courts of equity. It is to produce an outline of the procedures and an introduction to the records of the jurisdiction for those who may wish to work in the same field but to dig deeper.

A Note On Robinson's Brief Collection Of ... Courts Of Records, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

IN 1953 R. L. Rickard edited for the Camden Miscellany a short tract by Richard Robinson which describes briefly the various English courts of law as they were at the end of the sixteenth century: 'A Briefe Collection of the Queenes Majesties Most High and Most Honourable Courtes of Recordes.' In addition to the three manuscript copies which Rickard mentioned in his preface, fourteen others have recently been identified of which he appears to have been unaware. Since one of these is more complete and several are more interesting than the copy which was edited, a short note is required …

A Letter Of Lewis Burwell To James Burrough, July 8, 1734, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

Not long ago while rummaging through the record office in Bury St. Edmunds, I came across a letter 1 from Lewis Burwell (1710-1756) of Gloucester County, Virginia, to James Burrough (1691-1764), his cousin and former tutor at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, which sheds some light upon the Burwell family and the education of colonial Virginians in the mother country.

William Senior (1862-1937), Legal Historian, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

Upon receiving from Clare College, Cambridge, a William Senior scholarship to continue my studies in legal history, I enquired about the man whose generosity was being extended to me. No one knew anything about him. Therefore, I collected the information for this short piece as much out of curiosity as piety. Having done so, I discovered a legal historian and scholar of moderate proportions who does not deserve such complete neglect. Had he been a teacher or a politician, my efforts might have been rewarded by the discovery of more personal information about the man himself. As it is, very …

The Equity Jurisdiction Of The Exchequer, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The equity jurisdiction of the Exchequer has been so overshadowed by the equity jurisdiction of the Chancery and that of other courts that there is today only a foggy awareness that it ever existed. Therefore it is the purpose of this communication to locate this court .within the course of English legal history and to say a word or two about its development.

The Equity Side Of The Exchequer: Its Jurisdiction, Administration, Procedures, And Records, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The equity side of the court of exchequer "is by far the most obscure of all the English jurisdiction," declared Plucknett. The purpose of this essay is to shed some light upon this court and to explore its jurisdiction, to introduce its staff, to discover its procedures, to explain its equity records, and perhaps to render Plucknett's statement obsolete.

The Equity Side Of The Exchequer: Its Jurisdiction, Administration, Procedures, And Records Vol. 2 Appendices, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The principles of transcribing which have been followed in these appendices and in the extracts throughout the text are basically those of the "Report on Editing Historical Documents".

Review Of The High Court Of Delegates, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

A book review on The High Court of Delegates by G. I. 0. Duncan.

Witnesses: A Canonist's View, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare with our present practices a medieval text or summary of canonical procedure, the Summa de Ordine Iudiciario by Ricardus Anglicus-more narrowly, chapter XXX, which is concerned with witnesses. There are several reasons for examining the work of Ricardus Anglicus. This Englishman was a brilliant canonist in an age when the most ingenious and aggressive intellectuals were gravitating to the field of canon and civil law. Also he gives us a rather full summary of the subject.

Exchequer Equity Bibliography, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

This essay is concerned with the secondary bibliography of the equity jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer. It forms the preliminary inquiry of a general study of the history of this jurisdiction. This bibliography is in essay form because a list would not adequately explain the comparative significance of the various works. Moreover, the titles of the works are frequently misleading; some of the earlier ones have been attributed to the wrong author, and the relationships among them have never before been sorted out. Finally, this is the only place where all of these related works have been brought together; …

The American Doctrine Of Sovereign Immunity: An Historical Analysis, Daniel T. Murphy

Law Faculty Publications

Although more than one hundred and fifty years old, the case vivifying the concept of sovereign immunity, The Schooner Exchange v. M cFaddon, is still repeatedly referred to in judicial opinions. Significantly, it is cited not for purposes of distinction or historical perspective, but rather, is employed as a present underpinning for sovereign immunity, even though the political and social circumstances of today differ considerably from those existing in 1812.

Subsequent cases, however, while often justifying the conclusions reached by references to Marshall's discussion in The Schooner Exchange, have intertwined into the concept of sovereign immunity notions distinct from Chief …