A backward look at English legal history
A UB Law faculty member since 2011, Professor Matthew Steilen has followed his scholarly pursuits wherever they lead, including as a visiting legal scholar at the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and conducting research at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, Va.
His most recent such expedition took him farther afield: to the University of Cambridge, England, where he was a visiting legal scholar in what that university calls the Lent and Easter academic terms.
Steilen, whose research interests have centered around constitutional law and legal history, was there primarily to complete a book manuscript with the tentative title, Inventing Parliament: The Formation of a Legislative Power in Medieval England, 1100-1350. The book, which is forthcoming from Routledge Press, looks at the growth of deliberative politics, representation and statutory law-making in English parliaments before 1400.
UB Law Links invited him to reflect on his time abroad and the work that took him to Cambridge.
Your time in England included temporary positions at Emmanuel and Wolfson colleges as well as the University of Cambridge. Did that involve teaching, and what was your impression of British law students?
My visit was for research, so I did not teach any Cambridge law undergrads.
I did form an impression of the graduate students pursuing PhDs in legal history. They were working on a variety of issues, from church courts to the history of administrative law to the writings of the famous jurist and parliamentarian Sir Edward Coke. PhD students are typically expected to complete their degree in three years, which is shorter than is typical in the United States, so they have to work quickly to identify the relevant archives and sources, learn to read them and familiarize themselves with existing works of history. It’s a difficult task. Several became pretty good friends, since they were coordinating the legal history lecture series that I spoke in and attended.
In doing research, were you paging through primary sources in dusty archives, or was your source material digitized or otherwise readily accessible?
My research during the sabbatical was entirely into printed primary sources. Many of these sources are digitized and available through online repositories like Google Books, Internet Archive and Hathitrust. I chose to confine myself to printed primary sources for several reasons. First, the book I am writing on the origins of the English parliament is meant to be accessible to lawyers and judges as well as historians, and I want readers to be able to access the evidence I am using. Most folks who aren’t historians can’t access manuscript archives. Second, there is a massive amount of printed primary sources for medieval English law and society. These include narratives like chronicles and poems, lectures and scholarly treatises, and government records like charters, “writs” (orders) and legal records. In fact, there is more printed material than one could hope to read in a lifetime, so confining myself to printed sources has not been a severe constraint and has left me plenty of evidence to use.
The reason I visited Cambridge, then, was not to access their archives, but to access their people. The Faculty of Law and its Centre for English Legal History have the reputation of being one of the best places to study English legal and constitutional history in the world. I wanted to learn from those people if I could.
Your research topic is from long ago and far away. How do you see its resonance in current law?
Current law reflects medieval law in innumerable ways. This is especially true of constitutional law. The structure and powers of Congress have roots in medieval English parliaments, including Congress’ power to tax, to pass legislation in the form of a statute and to impeach officers—even just its structure as a representative body, whose members are elected in local districts, was a medieval development. Individual rights protected in the Constitution have medieval roots; the jury, just to pick one example, likely derives from a power claimed by medieval kings to assemble a body of locals to inform them of goings-on so that they could, among other things, protect local sources of royal income and keep tabs on their local properties. Trained lawyers and law books are also a medieval invention. It’s not at all hard to see medieval law and legal institutions in contemporary law, and it’s massively enlightening to know the connections.
Despite its incredible architecture and deep history, Cambridge seems like a small town. What was everyday life there like?
Lovely. We had no car. We biked with our children to school, and then I continued on to the library at the Faculty of Law or to one of the college libraries. Our flat was on a road that led to a pedestrian bridge over the River Cam, where we would watch the collegians rowing. The bridge opened onto a large commons where cattle grazed. Throughout the summer there were traveling fairs that set up in the commons with rides, games and food. Cambridge had several amazing museums and unbelievable music—there was a performance of some kind nearly every day for the full seven months we were there. We often ended the day by going to Evensong at one of the colleges famous for its music program, like King’s or St John’s. I had dining privileges at several colleges and attended high table a number of times, where we dressed in gowns and had a formal dinner.