Frederick Pollock and the English Juristic Tradition

Frederick Pollock and the English Juristic Tradition provides the first detailed historical account of one of England's great jurists.

Until the later decades of the twentieth century, law developed little as an academic discipline in England. One exceptional period of intellectual growth, however, was the late-Victorian era, when a number of brilliant and now celebrated jurists produced works and devised projects which had a crucial impact on the development of English legal thought. Among this band of jurists was the great legal treatise writer, historian, and editor, Frederick Pollock. Compared with many of his contemporaries, however, Pollock has been largely overlooked by modern legal historians.

Drawing upon a vast array of sources, Neil Duxbury offers a detailed picture of this enigmatic figure, examining Pollock's career, jurisprudence, philosophy of the common law, treatise writing, and editorial initiatives, and shows that Pollock's contribution to the development of English law and juristic inquiry is both complex and crucial.