Thomas J. McSweeney is Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School. He earned his J.D. and Ph.D. in history at Cornell University.
[T]he author makes a compelling case for a contextualist approach that looks beyond the narrow confines of doctrinal change to the influence exerted by different legal cultures upon one another. In this connection, the observation that the influence of Roman and canon law on the law of England was felt less upon its substance and procedures than upon the way in which law was conceived as an increasingly textual practice is both illuminating and insightful. * Peter Candy, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, The Edinburgh Law Review * The author offers a new interpretation of Henri Bracton and his fellow judges Martin of Pattishall and William of Raleigh, suggesting that their treatise (known as Bracton) was less an effort to restate or reform the Common Law than an undertaking to reinforce the status and authority of the judge. * Jus Gentium: Journal of International Legal History *