Stephen Michael Waddams

An interesting study of a little-treated topic - the Court of Arches in its last days in the 19th Century. Waddams - one of the two teachers I had who knew how to pronounce Law Latin properly - moves away from his previous work in contract law and remedies to English legal history and provides a careful and detailed study of a topic closer to his father's work (his father having been an Anglican Canon and the author of a work on Moral Theology).

Lushington's career spans cause célebre trials such as the trial in Parliament of George IV's wife ("Most Gracious Queen, we thee implore/To go away and sin no more/Or if that effort be too great/To go away at any rate") and the earlier Ritualism trials. Aside from the coverage given by Dickens to the Court of Arches in David Copperfield it is seriously neglected, partly because most historians and modern lawyers are ill-equipped to deal with this last of the civilian courts in England. Waddams' book is a welcome treatment of its latter days.

I should note that my sense of the book is coloured by having discussed the topic with the author while it was being written.… (meer)