What Does Paper Want, What Do Courtrooms Desire? Some Material Considerations for Legal Histories of England and Empire

In this workshop Prof Halliday, a leading scholar of the 18th C Atlantic world, is broadly concerned with social scientific methods and historiography, inspired, in part, by the thinking of three Oxford archaeologists. The workshop will be held in the Louey Seminar Room (2nd floor of the Dickson Poon / Oxford University China Centre, entrance from Canterbury Road at St Hugh's College). Paul Halliday is Julian Bishko professor of history and chair of the University’s Corcoran Department of History. He writes about the legal history of Britain and its empire from the 16th to 19th centuries. His most recent book, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire, was published by Harvard University Press in 2010 and won the 2011 Inner Temple Book Prize. His influential first monograph was entitled: Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England's Towns, 1650-1730 (Cambridge University Press, 1998). He frequently consults in the writing of briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on issues connected to English legal history.