By-catch

(Somewhere to put interesting and/or amusing – to me if nobody else – snippets which come my way during research trawls …)

22/4/2022

Found this on a search for bits and pieces on coverture. Learned that my kids got off very lightly with their names, and that Yale Law School once had an ‘Instructor in Domestic Relations’. Oh, I know it is something in the Family Law line, but doesn’t it sound rather more intimate?

24/4/2022

Re-reading D. W. Sutherland, The Assize of Novel Disseisin (Oxford, 1973) for the first time in some years, and rather struck by a couple of touches in the introductory chapter which seem very modern – 1. anthropomorphic treatment of the assize – just like some of those accounts of the biography of particular statutes (Sheldon et al. on the Abortion Act 1967 springs to mind); and 2 – on p.18 – comparison between debates about whether the assize came into being in one act of royal creation, and debates about intelligent design of the world by God. Maybe that second one is not modern as such, but certainly clever.

 

235/4/2022

A snippet from Lives of the Lord Chancellors about Lord Eldon, in which we learn:

(i) that French kissing did not mean what you think it means; and

(ii) he was a bit more of a one for ‘the ladies’ than you would guess  (see further below …picture via Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

and yes, I was looking up ‘kiss’  – perfectly respectable academic enquiry …