Articles
During 800th anniversary of magna carta, pundit complains property rights are medieval
In a guest column in today's major Sacramento printed news product, Christopher Thornburg complains that California's water rights system is inherited from medieval England. He is not really correct about that. California does enjoy a complex system of related water rights doctrines, only some of which have anything to do with English common law. ...
Articles
800 years later, the Magna Carta still matters
Today the world marks the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, one of the great documents of liberty. Eight centuries ago, at Runnymede on today's date in 1215, England's barons forced a resentful King John to accept landmark limits on royal power. The Magna Carta—the "Great Charter"—set precedents that undergird our freedoms up to ...
Articles
Happy birthday, Sir Edward Coke!
Today is the birthday of the greatest lawyer who ever lived, Sir Edward Coke. Lord Coke, who served as Queen Elizabeth I's attorney general, was one of the founding fathers of the common law itself—one of the people who helped form the idea that courts should collect and review previous decisions to build up a body of precedent on which to rely. He ...