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In recent years there has been a significant growth in interest of the so-called “law in context” extending legal studies beyond black letter law. This book looks at the relationship between written law and legal practice. It examines how law is applied in reality and more precisely how law is perceived by the general public in contrast to the legal profession. The authors look at a number of themes that are central to examining ways in which myths about law are formed, and how there is inevitably a constitutive power aspect to this myth making. At the same time they explore to what extent law itself creates and sustains myths. This line of enquiry is taken from a wide range of viewpoints and thus offers a unique approach to the question of relationship between theory and practice. The book critically assesses the public’s level of legal, psychological and social awareness in relation to their knowledge of law and deviant behaviour. This line of enquiry is taken from a wide range of viewpoints and thus offers a unique approach to the question of relationship between theory and practice. The book covers both empirical studies and theoretical engagements in the area of legal understanding and this affords a very comprehensive coverage of the area, and addressing issues of gender and class, as well as considering psychological material. It brings together a range of academics and practitioners and asks questions and address contemporary issues relating to the relationship between law and popular beliefs.
the gypsies as taking something precious close to our heart, be it children, land or thieving in general. Both negative and positive myths evoke the image of ‘the other’, but the negative myths create the dangerous, treacherous, threatening ‘other’, whose values are outlandish. When analysing the legal standing of the gypsy today, the chapter focuses on the relationship between law and legal myths regarding the public’s fear of the gypsy as land grabber. Jago shows how both courts and the legislator struggle to balance property rights (especially on the Green Belt
king, so that a violent act committed on the king’s road (as distinct from anywhere else) became an offence in its own right (forestel). In the Assize of Clarendon (1166), Henry II asserted royal jurisdiction over the whole kingdom, thereby making forestel and the special protection of roads lose their legal distinctiveness. In the context of this generalization of royal jurisdiction emerged the ‘pseudo-legal myth’ of the king’s four highways – public thoroughfares that still enjoyed special royal protection: the Fosse Way, Ermine Street, Watling Street and the
, disposable at his will.3 By the twelfth century, a pseudo-legal myth was doing the rounds, complete with pseudo-historical origins, which claimed that travellers were only protected on four particular, named highways – usually, but not always, the Fosse Way, Ermine Street, Watling Street and the Icknield Way – built by ancient kings. This myth was embroidered generation by generation through the twelfth century, by legists and tellers of tales alike, so that by the end of the century it had become very silly indeed.4 This canard seems never to have carried any real legal