Halliday's magisterial revisionist history is as impressive as it is indispensable. -- David Armitage, author of The Declaration of Independence: A Global History In clear, at times compelling, prose Halliday offers an outstanding work of historical and legal scholarship. I am unaware of any treatment of habeas corpus which covers so broad a canvas or rests upon such massive archival foundations. Halliday has convincingly demolished the traditional myth of habeas corpus. One might even say that the conceptual sophistication, evidential weight, and span of this book point towards a new way of doing constitutional history. -- Wilfrid Prest, University of Adelaide A remarkable work, based on truly heroic research. Halliday explains why liberty in the English sense of the term could only be understood as liberty under the law, and he offers a robust revision of the whiggish view that has traditionally seen the rise of habeas and the rise of parliamentary democracy as part of the same process in the development of liberty. He provides a particularly illuminating account of how the older common law system of largely judge-made law actually worked. Ambitious, convincing, and penetrating, Habeas Corpus will surely stand as the authoritative account. -- Christopher W. Brooks, Durham University Halliday changes the way that we understand both habeas corpus and the power of legal processes more generally. He shows us how kingship helped to shape the writ, how the writ helped to shape the empire, and how historical circumstances helped to shape all three. Based on exhaustive research, this book breaks new ground and suggests new ways of thinking about both rights and liberties. -- Cynthia B. Herrup, University of Southern California This is a book of astonishing forensic brilliance that transforms our understanding of where the liberties of the Anglophone world came from and how they can still be deployed to stop overmighty rulers in their tracks when they abuse their democratic mandate. I have not read a more important history book for many years. -- John Morrill, University of Cambridge With grace, elegance, and insight, Halliday has taken a writ and found an empire. He has not only written a compelling account of habeas corpus, but provided an imaginatively conceived legal history that offers a new model for how to write meaningfully about procedures. This important book is a spectacular achievement. -- Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School This book is superb. In a tour de force of archival research, Halliday singlehandedly reshapes our view of the historical scope and characteristics of habeas corpus. He demonstrates that the writ must be understood as a feature of the royal prerogative, allowing the king's courts to demand an explanation for the imprisonment of the king's subjects, whether citizen or alien. There is little doubt that this will become the standard account of the Great Writ. -- James Oldham, Georgetown University Law Center A book that every historian of English government and Anglo-American law should read, this will be the starting point for anyone interested in the origins and interpretation of habeas corpus. It rests on deep, original research that is presented with subtlety and sophistication. Habeas Corpus will be an instant classic. -- Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University Law School
Paul D. Halliday is Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
Halliday's magisterial revisionist history is as impressive as it
is indispensable. -- David Armitage, author of The Declaration
of Independence: A Global History
In clear, at times compelling, prose Halliday offers an outstanding
work of historical and legal scholarship. I am unaware of any
treatment of habeas corpus which covers so broad a canvas or rests
upon such massive archival foundations. Halliday has convincingly
demolished the traditional myth of habeas corpus. One might even
say that the conceptual sophistication, evidential weight, and span
of this book point towards a new way of doing constitutional
history. -- Wilfrid Prest, University of Adelaide
A remarkable work, based on truly heroic research. Halliday
explains why liberty in the English sense of the term could only be
understood as liberty under the law, and he offers a robust
revision of the whiggish view that has traditionally seen the rise
of habeas and the rise of parliamentary democracy as part of the
same process in the development of liberty. He provides a
particularly illuminating account of how the older common law
system of largely judge-made law actually worked. Ambitious,
convincing, and penetrating, Habeas Corpus will surely stand
as the authoritative account. -- Christopher W. Brooks, Durham
University
Halliday changes the way that we understand both habeas corpus and
the power of legal processes more generally. He shows us how
kingship helped to shape the writ, how the writ helped to shape the
empire, and how historical circumstances helped to shape all three.
Based on exhaustive research, this book breaks new ground and
suggests new ways of thinking about both rights and liberties. --
Cynthia B. Herrup, University of Southern California
This is a book of astonishing forensic brilliance that transforms
our understanding of where the liberties of the Anglophone world
came from and how they can still be deployed to stop overmighty
rulers in their tracks when they abuse their democratic mandate. I
have not read a more important history book for many years. -- John
Morrill, University of Cambridge
With grace, elegance, and insight, Halliday has taken a writ and
found an empire. He has not only written a compelling account of
habeas corpus, but provided an imaginatively conceived legal
history that offers a new model for how to write meaningfully about
procedures. This important book is a spectacular achievement. --
Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School
This book is superb. In a tour de force of archival research,
Halliday singlehandedly reshapes our view of the historical scope
and characteristics of habeas corpus. He demonstrates that the writ
must be understood as a feature of the royal prerogative, allowing
the king's courts to demand an explanation for the imprisonment of
the king's subjects, whether citizen or alien. There is little
doubt that this will become the standard account of the Great Writ.
-- James Oldham, Georgetown University Law Center
A book that every historian of English government and
Anglo-American law should read, this will be the starting point for
anyone interested in the origins and interpretation of habeas
corpus. It rests on deep, original research that is presented with
subtlety and sophistication. Habeas Corpus will be an
instant classic. -- Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University Law
School
Halliday constructs an exhaustive and informative legal history of
the English writ of habeas corpus from the 16th century to the
present...Halliday provides an expertly developed analysis which
draws multiple interesting connections between the writ of habeas
corpus and sources of English law, many of which are connected to
the U.S. Constitution...This book is highly recommended
for...individuals who are seriously interested in this component of
legal history. -- Steven Puro * Library Journal *
[A] superb history of habeas corpus...Part legal drama, part subtle
causal analysis, this book proves that a gripping history of a
legal writ is no contradiction in terms...[A] lucid and learned
account. -- Adrian Vermeule * New Republic online *
In what was a heroic research quest, Mr. Halliday has undertaken a
needed and timely reexamination of what some call the "great writ
of liberty"--the writ of habeas corpus--and concludes that its
basic purpose is about who gets to exercise power and not at all
about individual rights as most of us quite wrongly think...This
book of meticulous history is as fresh as today's headlines and
should be required reading for anyone concerned about our rights
and our security. -- James Srodes * Washington Times *
[Halliday] challenges the way that most chroniclers go about
drafting constitutional history...In order to better understand the
history of the Great Writ, he went beyond the well-known
commentaries of Blackstone and his countryman Edward Coke and
turned to thousands of unopened parchment documents, concerning
more than eleven thousand habeas cases from 1500 to 1800, from
London's National Archives...And as he worked through the
documents, he discovered that they tell a very different story than
the lofty historical writing about the writ might suggest...If
habeas corpus is a tool of judicial power, its greatest enemy is
often the elected branches that fear that power, particularly in
wartime. That was precisely the rationale that Congress used in
passing the Military Commissions Act, which barred more than four
hundred detainees at Guantanamo from having access to the writ.
When the Supreme Court found that action unconstitutional, it was,
in many ways, just one more battle in a centuries-long fight over
institutional power...Habeas Corpus is...full of colorful
judges, unhappy sailors, and enough estranged wives to make these
thousands of dusty old documents come vividly to life. But as a
challenge to legal historians and their sacred-cow interpretations
of the foundations of personal liberty--and, more essentially, as a
methodological revision of the standard historical scholarship on
the law--this book will change the landscape altogether. It serves
as a critical reminder to the rest of us that even in wartime, at
great distances, and across hundreds of years, the best way to
judge the facts is to begin by looking at them. -- Dahlia Lithwick
* Bookforum *
Timely, important and thought-provoking...Eschewing a Whiggish
reliance on the triumphalist assertions of well-known legal
writers, Halliday uses the "often filthy and rumpled" writs, return
to writs, enrolled copies, court orders and affidavits in the court
of King's Bench archives to construct a radically revisionist
account of how the writ worked between 1500 and 1800. -- Clare
Jackson * Literary Review *
[A] monumental work...For anyone deeply interested in these issues
it provides an invigorating blast against received ideas and
intellectual complacency. Above all, it challenges us to think
again about the foundation stones of personal liberty. * The
Economist *
Not the least merit of Paul Halliday's enthralling and scholarly
historical survey, focusing primarily on the years 1500-1800, is to
remind us of what could be seen as the glory days of habeas
corpus...Halliday's researches not only illuminate the legal
history of habeas corpus but also provide fascinating insights into
the social history of the period he studies....Halliday's
researches yield a rich harvest of human stories which have all the
vividness of the common law itself, yet fall into a discernible
pattern which he traces with skill and clarity. -- Tom Bingham *
London Review of Books *
The year's most readable book about English common law came from an
American history professor--Habeas Corpus. The legal wonder
that Britain bequeathed the world has unlocked prison doors for so
many who have been wrongly detained; Paul Halliday tells the story
for general readers, and lets the lawyers grub around his copious
footnotes if interested in the technicalities. -- Geoffrey
Robertson * New Statesman *
[A] splendid and important book...It is one of the great strengths
of Halliday's book that he is able to combine discussion of some of
the international and continuing ramifications of habeas corpus
with massive precise and forensic archival research into its
English origins and evolution...It casts much brilliant new light
on the subject. -- Linda Colley * Times Literary Supplement *
[An] engaging book...[Halliday] has drawn on a detailed study of
habeas corpus cases in the King's Bench in London between 1500 and
1800. The book is a monument to his thoroughgoing investigation of
original documents, most of them still kept in the British National
Archives...Despite its detail, lengthy endnotes, and an index
stretching over 160 pages (or a third of the book), Halliday
realizes the simple truth that the cases he describes are all human
stories. They show the law, in its busy daily work, where it
matters most. -- Michael Kirby * Australian Book Review *
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