Islands of Law

This comprehensive legal history of the British Isles describes the growth and interaction of legal systems in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the seventeenth century to the present. Islands of Law undertakes to amend two gaps in historical writing by using legal history to illuminate the general narrative of events and by offering a new contribution to the recent direction of multinational historical study of the British Isles. The central thesis of the book contends that legal interaction was an important part of many major events, but where there were battles for survival in the seventeenth century, the processes of interaction have become more benign, though no less potent, in the twentieth century.