Abstract

Stephen's History of the Criminal Law of England - II

The article presents information about the book "A History of the Criminal Law of England," by James Fitzjames Stephen. The book in the main is a work on criminal jurisprudence. It is secondarily a history of criminal law. But though this is so, the originality and importance of author Stephen's treatise lie in its historical character. The essays on jurisprudence that it contains are full of interest, but they neither exhibit a new side of their author's mind nor open a new field of thought. Their merits are great, but among these merits can hardly be numbered originality. Of the historical portion of the book, one may speak in very different terms. There is real originality in the attempt to trace out the development of a province of English law.