Today, almost half of all children are born outside marriage, with cohabiting relationships accounting for the majority of such births. But what was the situation in earlier centuries? Bringing together leading historians, demographers and lawyers, this interdisciplinary collection examines the changing context of non-marital child-bearing in England and Wales since 1600. Drawing on Private Acts of Parliament, ecclesiastical court records, reported cases, sessions files, coronial records, poor law records, petitions to the London Foundling Hospital, the registers of the London Bridewell, the records of charitable institutions, surveys and modern demographic data, it not only shows the relative rarity of cohabitation in earlier periods but also discovers the nature of individual relationships. It also explores how differences in the extent of both non-marital child-bearing and cohabitation emerge depending on definition, source material, interpretation and location, building up a more nuanced picture of past practices.

Catherine Exley was born in Leeds in 1779. Aged thirty, she boarded a ship and sailed for Portugal. Her memoir of the years she spent following the 34th Regiment is unique, the only first-hand account of the Peninsular War by the wife of a common British soldier. Published shortly after her death as a booklet which has since been lost, Catherine’s Diary survived in a local newspaper of 1923 to be rediscovered by her great-great-great-grandson. It is difficult today to comprehend the hardships Catherine endured: of her twelve children, three died as infants while with her on the march; her clothes, ‘covered with filth and vermin’, often went unchanged for weeks at a time, and she herself more than once almost died from illness and starvation; shocked at the mutilation inflicted by muskets and cannons, she still had the composure to manhandle blackened corpses upon a battlefield in search of her missing husband when hardened soldiers could no longer stomach the task. Her diary is reproduced here along with chapters which bear upon Catherine’s experiences in Spain and Portugal, and which put her life and writings in their social context.

Brought up in the stately grandeur of Burghley House as heir to the earldom of Exeter, Henry Cecil seemed to have made a suitable match to the heiress of Hanbury Hall, but their marriage was to end in disaster when Emma eloped with Henry's friend, the local curate. Heartbroken, Henry turned his back on aristocratic life, taking up residence in a remote Shropshire village and marrying a farmer's daughter - without having obtained a divorce from his first wife.... The story of Henry Cecil's matrimonial entanglements became an overnight sensation in the 1790s, and even through into the twentieth century was still being told and retold in poetry, song, ballet and prose. 'A Noble Affair' untangles fact from fiction and explores the difficulties Henry faced in extricating himself with honour from the situation. Written by three scholars who have carried out extensive research into marriage, adultery, bigamy and divorce in eighteenth-century England, this new account illustrates just how limited the options once were for those who experienced marital breakdown, and discovers that in some respects Henry did indeed behave nobly.

Sixty years on from the signing of the Refugee Convention, forced migration and refugee movements continue to raise global concerns for hosting states and regions, for countries of origin, for humanitarian organisations on the ground, and, of course, for the refugee. This edited volume is framed around two themes which go to the core of contemporary ‘refugeehood’: protection and identity. It analyses how the issue of refugee identity is shaped by and responds to the legal regime of refugee protection in contemporary times.

Conflict of Laws provides a straight-forward and accessible introduction to English private international law. It examines the jurisdiction of English courts (and whether their judgments are enforced and recognized overseas) and the effect of foreign judgments in England. Recent years have seen an increased ‘Europeanization’ of English Law which has transformed the subject and this fifth edition takes into account key recent developments and regulations including proposed changes to Brussels I, Rome II, The Maintenance Regulation, Rome III, the proposed Rome IV and the proposed Succession Regulation.

On 14 September 2003 Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, was arrested in Basra by British troops and taken to a military base for questioning. Less than forty-eight hours later he was dead. In A Very British Killing A.T. Williams tells the inside story of this crime and its aftermath, exposing the casual brutality, bureaucratic apathy, and instituional failure to hold people criminally responsible for Mousa's death. What it reveals about Britain and its political and military institutions is explosive.

The third book in the Criminalization series examines the constitutionalization of criminal law. It considers how the criminal law is constituted through the political processes of the state; how the agents of the criminal law can be answerable to it themselves; and finally, how the criminal law can be constituted as part of the international order.

Following excellent sales of Lorraine Talbot's book Progressive Corporate Governance for the 21st Century, it has now been published in paperback.

For more details or to order an inspection copy see the links below

product page of the book http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138805200/

• digital library recommendation form http://www.routledge.com/resources/librarian_recommendation/9781138805200/
• digital review copy request form http://www.routledge.com/resources/review_copy_request/9781138805200/

Social Movements, Law and the Politics of Land Reform investigates how rural social movements are struggling for land reform against the background of ambitious but unfulfilled constitutional promises evident in much of the developing world. Taking Brazil as an example, it unpicks the complex reasons behind the remarkably consistent failures of its constitution and law enforcement mechanisms to deliver social justice. Using detailed empirical evidence and focusing upon the relationship between rural social struggles and the state, the book develops a threefold argument: first, the inescapable presence of power relations in all aspects of the production and reproduction of law; secondly their dominant impact on socio-legal outcomes; and finally the essential and positive role played by social movements in redressing those power imbalances and realising law’s progressive potentialities.

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) reshaped the debates about slavery and freedom throughout the Atlantic world, accelerated the abolitionist movement, precipitated rebellions in neighboring territories, and intensified both repression and antislavery sentiment. The story of the birth of the world’s first independent black republic has since held an iconic fascination for a diverse array of writers, artists, and intellectuals throughout the Atlantic diaspora. Examining twentieth-century responses to the Haitian Revolution, Philip Kaisary offers a profound new reading of the representation of the Revolution by radicals and conservatives alike in primary texts that span English, French, and Spanish languages and that include poetry, drama, history, biography, fiction, and opera.

Blackstock, J., Lloyd-Cape, E., Hodgson, J., Ogorodova, A. and Spronken, T. Inside Police Custody: An Empirical Account of Suspects' Rights in Four Jurisdictions, published by Intersentia.

This empirical study of the procedural rights of suspects in four EU jurisdictions – France, Scotland, the Netherlands and England and Wales – focuses on three of the procedural rights set out in the EU Roadmap for strengthening the procedural rights of suspected or accused persons in criminal proceedings – the right to interpretation and translation; the right to information and the letter of rights; and the right to legal assistance before and during police interrogation.

On September 12th 2013, Professor Gary Watt delivered a public lecture at Duke Law School on his new book Dress, Law and Naked Truth: A Cultural Study of Fashion and Form (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013)

Why are civil authorities in so-called liberal democracies affronted by public nudity and the Islamic full-face ‘veil’? Why is law and civil order so closely associated with robes, gowns, suits, wigs and uniforms? Why is law so concerned with the ‘evident’ and the need for justice to be ‘seen’ to be done? Why do we dress and obey dress codes at all? In this, the first ever study devoted to the many deep cultural connections between dress and law, the author addresses these questions and more. His responses flow from the radical thesis that ‘law is dress and dress is law’.