Friday, August 25, 2023

The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom

The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom, a two-volume work edited by Peter Cane, Christ's College, Cambridge, and Australian National University, and H. Kumarasingham, University of Edinburgh, has been published.  Here is a composite of the press’s descriptions of the two volumes:

Featuring contributions from leading scholars of history, law and politics, this path-breaking two-volume work traces the development of the United Kingdom's constitution from Anglo-Saxon times and explores its role in the creation, exercise and control of public power. Chapters in Volume One, entitled "Exploring the Constitution," approach the constitution and its history from various scholarly perspectives, and provide historically sensitive discussions of constitutional actors and institutions, and of political traditions and transformations of the constitution. Essays in Volume Two, entitled "The Changing Constitution," examine the development of the constitution from the departure of the Romans up to the present day and beyond. Together, the two volumes form the first, wide-ranging history of the constitution to be published for more than 50 years. By its cross-disciplinary approach, taking account of the latest legal, political and historical scholarship on the constitution, it fills a large gap in the literature of the constitution, and in political thought and British history.

The TOC for the first, thematic volume, is here; the one for the second, more chronologically organized volume, is here.

--Dan Ernst.  H/t: DC