Cambridge Studies in English Legal History: Legal Foundations of Tribunals in Nineteenth Century England

Nineteenth-century governments faced considerable challenges from the rapid, novel and profound changes in social and economic conditions resulting from the industrial revolution. In the context of an increasingly sophisticated and complex government, from the 1830s the specialist and largely lay statutory tribunal was conceived and adopted as the principal method of both implementing the new regulatory legislation and resolving disputes. The tribunal's legal nature and procedures, and its place in the machinery of justice, were debated and refined throughout the Victorian period. In examining this process, this 2007 book explains the interaction between legal constraints, social and economic demand and political expediency that gave rise to this form of dispute resolution. It reveals the imagination and creativity of the legislators who drew on diverse legal institutions and values to create the new tribunals, and shows how the modern difficulties of legal classification were largely the result of the institution's nineteenth-century development.

Acknowledgements; Table of Statutes; Table of cases; List of abbreviations; 1. Challenges to the legal process; 2. The ideological and theoretical context; 3. Composition and personnel; 4. Jurisdiction and functional powers; 5. Procedure and practice; 6. Judicial supervision; 7. Principles, place and perceptions.