Introduction
The Study of Cases
Politics and Law in Elizabethan England: Shelley's Case
The Timeless Principles of Common Law: Keeble V. Hickeringill
(1707)
Legal Science and Legal Absurdity: Jee v. Audley
The Beauty of Obscurity Raffles v. Wickelhaus and Busch
Victorian Judges and the Problems of Social Cost: Tipping v. St
Helen's Smelting Company (1865)
Bursting Reservoirs and Victorian Tort Law: Rylands and Horrocks v.
Fletcher (1868)
The Ideal of the Rule of Law: Regina v. Keyn (1876)
Quackery and Contract Law: Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company
(1893)
`engaging and profoundly subversive book...If there is a more
painstaking and ingenious researcher of local knowledge, a shrewder
and more avid excavator of miscellanies, than Brian Simpson, I have
never run across him: Simpson seems to have dug up pretty nearly
everything that seems even remotely relevant to understanding his
cases, and a great deal more besides. Indeed, so overwhelming is
the mass of contextual detail that the reader is rescued from
psychic inundation only by the inherent fascination of much of the
background and Simpson's seductive charm as a storyteller. This is
a very funny book.'
Michigan Law Review
`This book is a classic. Professor Simpson, who is one of the
world's greatest legal historians, has comprehensively reserached
the background to a number of leading cases in the common law.'
International Trade and Business Law Journal
`his historical miniatures are valuable...Each historical interlude
is well-reserached, sympathetic and well-written in Professor
Simpson's laconic and ironic style. The volume is particularly
recommended to beginning law students, to reassure them that the
real world of the law is firmly placed in the real world of human
passions and desires.'
Ottawa Law Review
`A good-humoured and forgiving cynicism pervades his interpretation
of the legal past.'
The Cambridge Law Journal
`Leading Cases in the Common Law should be on the shelves of all
academic, courthouse and large private law libraries, and in the
personal collection of every lawyer who ever wondered about the
nature of the law and what they do all day. Not only is this book
informative and educational, it is also a good read...Professor
Simpson has produced a most useful and welcome addition to a too
often neglected area of legal scholarship.'
Canadian Law Libraries
`Three of four of the ten pieces in this collection were published
earlier, and some are already modern classics...These pieces show
an astonishing erudition and breadth of historical knowledge, and
will delight and instruct both specialists and general readers...
This summary of the contents should justify any lover of the common
law in reading the book... He is born story-teller, and often the
case-law he selects seems only to be a pretext to tell the
reader something interesting and amusing about the past...May we
see many more books flow from Professor Simpson's wonderful and
original pen.'
Legal History
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