Wilfrid Prest, AM (born 1940) is a historian, specialising in legal history, who is professor emeritus at the University of Adelaide. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, [1] the Australian Academy of the Humanities, [2] the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia , and Queen's College, University of Melbourne, and a member of the Council of the Selden Society, London. [3]
He has published five sole-author books, three scholarly textual editions, and twelve edited collections, together with numerous journal articles and entries in works of reference.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, of English parents and educated at schools in Melbourne, York and Cambridge, Prest read history at the University of Melbourne, then studied as a Rhodes Scholar (Victoria and New College, 1962) for his doctorate at the University of Oxford. After six months as a publishing trainee in London, he became a lecturer in history at the University of Adelaide in 1966. He subsequently spent two years (1969–71) as assistant professor at The Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, before returning to the University of Adelaide, where he remained a member of the history department until July 2002. Between 1978 and 1985, he was also chairman of the Board of the Art Gallery of South Australia.
In 2002 Prest resigned his personal chair in History to take up an Australian Research Council Australian Professorial Fellowship; he moved to the Law School in 2003, and subsequently held his fellowship as a joint appointment between Law and History, while preparing a biography of William Blackstone. From 2010 to 2015, he oversaw as general editor the preparation of a new variorum edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England , first published in four volumes from 1765 to 1769. He is currently working on volume nine (1689–1760) of the Oxford History of the Laws of England with his Adelaide colleague David Lemmings and Mike Macnair of the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.
In the 2021 Australia Day Honours list, Prest was awarded Member (AM) in the General Division for significant service to tertiary education and to the law and legal history. [4]
In English, the phrase rule of thumb refers to an approximate method for doing something, based on practical experience rather than theory. This usage of the phrase can be traced back to the 17th century and has been associated with various trades where quantities were measured by comparison to the width or length of a thumb.
Sir Matthew Hale was an influential English barrister, judge and jurist most noted for his treatise Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown.
Edward Foss was an English lawyer and biographer. He became a solicitor, and on his retirement from practice in 1840, devoted himself to the study of legal antiquities. His Judges of England was regarded as a standard work, characterized by accuracy and extensive research. Biographia Juridica, a Biographical Dictionary of English Judges, appeared shortly after his death.
Sir William Blackstone was an English jurist, justice and Tory politician most noted for his Commentaries on the Laws of England, which became the best-known description of the doctrines of the English common law. Born into a middle-class family in London, Blackstone was educated at Charterhouse School before matriculating at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1738. After switching to and completing a Bachelor of Civil Law degree, he was made a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, on 2 November 1743, admitted to Middle Temple, and called to the Bar there in 1746. Following a slow start to his career as a barrister, Blackstone became heavily involved in university administration, becoming accountant, treasurer and bursar on 28 November 1746 and Senior Bursar in 1750. Blackstone is considered responsible for completing the Codrington Library and Warton Building, and simplifying the complex accounting system used by the college. On 3 July 1753 he formally gave up his practice as a barrister and instead embarked on a series of lectures on English law, the first of their kind. These were massively successful, earning him a total of £453, and led to the publication of An Analysis of the Laws of England in 1756, which repeatedly sold out and was used to preface his later works.
Blackstone may refer to:
The Commentaries on the Laws of England are an influential 18th-century treatise on the common law of England by Sir William Blackstone, originally published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford between 1765 and 1769. The work is divided into four volumes, on the rights of persons, the rights of things, of private wrongs and of public wrongs.
Sir Robert Heath was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1625.
Sir John William Downer, KCMG, KC was an Australian politician who served two terms as Premier of South Australia, from 1885 to 1887 and again from 1892 to 1893. He later entered federal politics and served as a Senator for South Australia from 1901 to 1903. He was the first of four Australian politicians from the Downer family dynasty.
John Jefferson Bray, was an Australian lawyer, judge, academic, university administrator, Crown officer, and poet. From 1967 to 1978, he served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia.
Sir George John Robert Murray was a judge from 2 April 1913 until 18 February 1942 on the Supreme Court of South Australia, which is the highest ranking court in the Australian State of South Australia. He was Chief Judge from 20 January 1916 until 18 February 1942.
Sir William Harrison Moore KBE CMG, usually known as Harrison Moore or W. Harrison Moore, was an Australian lawyer and academic who was a professor at the University of Melbourne and the third dean of the Melbourne University Law School.
Serjeant John Hoskins or Hoskyns was an English poet, scholar of Greek, lawyer, judge, and politician.
Thomas William McCawley was an Australian lawyer and Chief Justice of Queensland.
Sir John William Salmond was a legal scholar, public servant and judge in New Zealand.
An Analysis of the Laws of England is a legal treatise by British legal professor William Blackstone. It was first published by the Clarendon Press in 1756. A Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a lecturer there, on 3 July 1753 Blackstone announced his intentions to give a set of lectures on the common law — the first lectures of that sort in the world. A prospectus was issued on 23 June 1753, and with a class of approximately 20 students, the first lecture series was completed by July 1754. Despite Blackstone's limited oratory skills and a speaking style described by Jeremy Bentham as "formal, precise and affected", Blackstone's lectures were warmly appreciated. The second and third series were far more popular, partially due to his then unusual use of printed handouts and lists of suggested reading. These show Blackstone's attempts to reduce English law to a logical system, with the division of subjects later being the basis for his Commentaries. The lecture series brought him £116, £226 and £111 a year respectively from 1753 to 1755 — a total of £75,000 in 2023 terms. Seeing the success of this publication, Blackstone was induced to write An Analysis of the Laws of England, a 200-page introduction to English law, which was first published in 1756 by the Clarendon Press.
A Discourse on the Study of the Law is a treatise by Sir William Blackstone first published in 1758. On 20 October 1758 Blackstone had been confirmed as the first Vinerian Professor of English Law, and immediately gave a lecture on 24 October, which was reprinted as the Discourse.
Alexander Popham was a British penal reformer and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1768 and 1796.
Thomas Bever was an English civil lawyer and legal writer. He is known also as an antiquarian scholar and patron.
The Eldon Law Scholarship is a scholarship awarded to students from the University of Oxford who wish to study for the English Bar. Applicants must either have obtained a first class honours degree in the Final Honours School, or obtained a distinction on the BCL or MJur. It is a two-year scholarship presently funded at £9,000 a year.
Legal education in England is the practice of teaching and learning English Law, whether to become a practicing lawyer or as an academic pursuit. Legal education has undergone significant changes over the last two thousand years, transforming from an exclusively apprenticeship-based process to one split across secondary education, the university, and the profession. Currently, university law degrees are regulated by the legal profession, which controls the core subjects a law degree must contain before graduates can pursue further professional qualification.