Old, weird, good legal cases

April 15, 2020 12:19 PM

I'm looking for pre-1700 legal cases that are interesting, or weird, or have challenging problems where both sides have good points. Got links, case names, blogs, online collections? Hit me up.

Pre-1700 is an arbitrary cutoff, just that Blackstone started making Anglo-American law boring and systematized in the 1700s and stuff got more corporate and less personal and it's just less-interesting after that. Doesn't have to be common law systems; can be any old legal cases where we see that people fight about the same stuff throughout history, or that humans are always weird throughout history, or illustrate really tough or tricky issues where everyone is in the right in SOME way but there's no win/win available.

Normally I'd dig through law school textbooks or hit up the library but my textbooks are in storage and the library is closed and my internet searching just keeps turning up Supreme Court cases (NO.) and The Thornes Case which I already used.

posted by Eyebrows McGee to Human Relations (12 answers total)

I think a lot of the legal notices and contracts you find in papyri from Egypt in the Graeco-Roman periods are quite interesting. They definitely fall into the "humans being human" across history category!

Here's a terse note with a threat to use a "legal instrument" over damp grain (2nd c. BCE)

Here's a petition to the epistrategos after violence that's quite interesting (August, 198 CE).

Some cool proceedings of a trial (6th c. CE)

ETA: This is a cool one: "Letter of reproach sent by Lysanias to Theophilos, for whom Alketas, Lysanias's brother, had become surety for his appearance at a trial, and who had left without consulting them; Lysanias also informs him that the other party has complained that Alketas is unable to produce him, and that he could have to pay a penalty because of Theophilos's absence" (July 4, 248 BCE)

Here's is a link to everything that has been tagged with "Justice" in the database. But many of the documents really are related to legal matters in some way (taxes, leases, contracts, loans, etc.). So if you browse by topic alphabetically you can find all sorts of interesting things.
posted by Mouse Army at 1:01 PM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

(I'm not sure if it ever went to court.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:17 PM on April 15, 2020

Not pre-1700 but the true crime series by LegalEagle on YouTube is pretty interesting... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUvQ_mNbE83XoZz05OngPiQSn6iAZz3GD
posted by AnneShirley at 1:30 PM on April 15, 2020

I think Tang yin bi shi is exactly what you're looking for, but without access to a library, the translation is probably impossible to get. There's also the first documented case of forensic entomology from 1235 AD. The famous cases of Bao Gong may be of interest, though they're sort of legendary. The Zhuang Tinglong case(s) is/are interesting, though more tragic than weird. Since the 1700 date is arbitrary and related to Anglo-American law, I'll also suggest True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China: Twenty Case Histories--they're mostly sort of prosaic cases but touch on "the same stuff throughout history" point pretty well.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:43 PM on April 15, 2020

Not so old but weird and notable are the Myra Clark Gaines cases. Bigamy, annulment, ecclesiastical courts, lost and contested wills, and a legal battle that stretched from 1834 to 1891. A bit of a celebrity "trial of the century" of its time.
posted by CheeseLouise at 2:02 PM on April 15, 2020

Here's one in the early history of slavery in the American Colonies. There has been a lot written about this case.

American Jezebel is an absorbing fictionalized account of the trials of Anne Hutchinson by one of her descendants. The author used every primary source available, including court transcripts.

Transcribed and digitized court records form the Salem Witch Trials.
posted by mareli at 3:28 PM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is perhaps a little offbeat, but I've been listening to the Saga Thing podcast, which "puts the sagas of the Icelanders on trial."

Pretty much every single saga involves--or even revolves around--around one or more trials or court cases, and many of them quite intricate.

Just for example, recently in my listening to their discussion of Njáls Saga there was a situation where Njal wants to find a suitable wife for his foster son Höskuldr. He finds a suitable candidate--but she will marry Höskuldr only if he is a chieftain. Njal tries, but cannot obtain any chieftancy for Höskuldr no matter what he does.

So Njal uses his position as an esteemed lawyer and law adviser to give advice to both sides of every pending legal case that year, that ends up tying every single case into insoluble knots. He then uses the ensuing chaos in the legal system to propose a new level of appellate court. The new court would be staffed by the chieftains of the various districts. However by chance, there is an even number of such chieftains, meaning that there was a possibility of deadlock, so Njal proposes creating a new type of chieftain to solve that problem.

This is accepted, which fixes the court backlog, improves the legal system (the creation of the so-called "Fifth Court"), and gains Höskuldr a chieftancy and a new wife all in one fell swoop.

That is one of some dozens of cases they have discussed in covering just a few sagas that I have listened to so far.

If you'd rather not listen to a podcast, you could probably find summaries of various sagas online, such as on wikipedia.
posted by flug at 4:28 PM on April 15, 2020 [5 favorites]

Do you know the story of Martin Guerre? It was made into a movie by Daniel Vigne, and the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis, who served as a historical consultant for the movie, then wrote a classic work of microhistory on the subject.

The movie and book aren't about the trial, per se, but it's one of the major sources. And one of the judges involved in the case, Jean de Coras, who wrote a pamphlet about it, is a character too.
posted by brianogilvie at 4:45 PM on April 15, 2020 [3 favorites]

You might be interested in reading some of the speeches given in cases before the Athenian law courts (or, at least, we think they were; some of them may have been rhetorical exercises or scholarly examples). Lysias's On the Murder of Erastothenes is a speech in defense of a man who came home, caught his wife in flagrante delicto, and killed her lover. Against Simon involves two men fighting over the favors of a young man, possibly a slave, possibly a prostitute. Then there's Defense in the Matter of the Olive Stump, which is over just as obscure a subject matter as you might infer from the title.
posted by praemunire at 5:34 PM on April 15, 2020

my textbooks are in storage and the library is closed and my internet searching just keeps turning up Supreme Court cases

Oh, with respect to this part, I had some luck with googling "site:archive.org" e.g. cases from the Court of Requests, 1497-1569, cases recorded by George Croke from the eras of Queen Elizabeth, King James, and King Charles, and a dozen volumes of cases from the reign of Charles II to George II. I also found Curious cases and amusing actions at law, including some trials of witches in the seventeenth century, though it seems to be taken from a mid-18th C. source.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:08 PM on April 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

The book Legal Systems Very Different From Ours might interest you. I couldn't summarize it better than its blurb:

This book looks at thirteen different legal systems, ranging from Imperial China to modern Amish: how they worked, what problems they faced, how they dealt with them. Some chapters deal with a single legal system, others with topics relevant to several, such as problems with law based on divine revelation or how systems work in which law enforcement is private and decentralized. The book’s underlying assumption is that all human societies face the same problems, deal with them in an interesting variety of different ways, are all the work of grown-ups, hence should all be taken seriously. It ends with a chapter on features of past legal systems that a modern system might want to borrow.

posted by Polycarp at 10:31 PM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

Always loved this case as it shows how times change.

www.oldbaileyonline.org

"John Hope , of the Parish of St. Martin in the Fields , was indicted for privately stealing 8 Dozen of Candles, Value 48 s. 1 Box, 1 s. 6 d. out of the Shop of Adam Hunter , on the 27th of December last. It was fully prov'd, that the Prisoner unbolted the Hatch, came into the Shop, and took away the Goods; upon which he was pursued and taken. The Prisoner denied the Fact, but made no reasonable Defence. The Jury found him Guilty of the Indictment."

Sentence was Death and this was carried out. Imagine, light was of such value that a theft resulted in death. Different times.
posted by Vroom_Vroom_Vroom at 12:40 PM on April 16, 2020