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Glanvill Common Law Documentary System
Glanvill (Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae) is the most important body of common law literature from the late 12th century in En…
Timeline
- c. 1181–1187English royal courts · EnglandAfter legislation such as the 1181 Assize of Arms and the maturation of the itinerant justices system, the English royal courts developed relatively stable classifications of writs and actions, providing a practical basis for Glanvill's systematic compilation of common law rules.
- c. 1187–1189England · EnglandAround 1187–1189, Glanvill was written in Latin, treating in separate books land tenure, inheritance, legal procedure, and royal privileges, and for the first time organizing scattered common law customs into a citable body of legal literature.
- c. 1190England · EnglandBy around 1190, Glanvill had become an authoritative text cited by judges, lawyers, and law students for common law, inaugurating the English legal paradigm of recording the customary law tradition in systematic treatises, and influencing later works such as Bracton.
Sources
- The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill — G. D. G. Hall (ed. and trans.) (1993)
- The Formation of the English Common Law — John Hudson (1996)