TY - CHAP

T1 - Law, Law-Consciousness and Lawyers as Constitutive of Early Modern England

T2 - Christopher W. Brooks’s Singular Journey

AU - Sugarman, David

N1 - This material has been published in Law, Lawyers and Litigants in Early Modern England. Essays in Memory of Christopher W. Brooks edited by Michael Lobban, Joanne Begiato and Adrian Green https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/law/legal-history/law-lawyers-and-litigants-early-modern-england-essays-memory-christopher-w-brooks?format=HB. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. © Cambridge University Press 2019

PY - 2019/6/30

Y1 - 2019/6/30

N2 - During the last half-century, Christopher W. Brooks (1948–2014) establishedhimself as the foremost historian of law in early modern Englishsociety. Through his scholarship, his teaching, and the generations ofstudents he advised and supervised, and as a friend and colleague, Brooksexercised, from the early 1990s onwards, an increasingly significant influenceon writing about early modern English history. He was the leadingexponent of a history of earlymodern England that transcended the boundariesof social, political and legal history, and which placed law and lawyerscentre stage. In doing so, he challenged major premises of the dominantvision of law-in-history in writing about English history. This chapter bringsa critical, if friendly, eye to Brooks’s work, focusing on how Brooks beat hisown path through the methodological thickets to create a distinctive visionof law in history, and on the strengths and weaknesses of that vision.

AB - During the last half-century, Christopher W. Brooks (1948–2014) establishedhimself as the foremost historian of law in early modern Englishsociety. Through his scholarship, his teaching, and the generations ofstudents he advised and supervised, and as a friend and colleague, Brooksexercised, from the early 1990s onwards, an increasingly significant influenceon writing about early modern English history. He was the leadingexponent of a history of earlymodern England that transcended the boundariesof social, political and legal history, and which placed law and lawyerscentre stage. In doing so, he challenged major premises of the dominantvision of law-in-history in writing about English history. This chapter bringsa critical, if friendly, eye to Brooks’s work, focusing on how Brooks beat hisown path through the methodological thickets to create a distinctive visionof law in history, and on the strengths and weaknesses of that vision.

KW - legal profession

KW - legal history

KW - historiography

KW - law and society

KW - law and history

M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)

SN - 9781108491723

SP - 32

EP - 57

BT - Law, Lawyers and Litigants in Early Modern England

A2 - Lobban, Michael

A2 - Begiato, Joanne

A2 - Green, Adrian

PB - Cambridge University Press

CY - Cambridge

ER -