Rose presented paper at University of London

Emeritus Professor Jonathan Rose presented a paper at the 2013 International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR) Annual Conference at the Queen Mary School of Law at the University of London on April 12-13.

The paper, “The Nature of Legal History as an Academic Discipline,” explores the commonality between the general interest in the past, the interest of historians and legal historians. It identifies three types of academic legal history: classical, liberal and critical and discusses their natures and different uses of the past.

The aim of this year’s conference, titled “Theory and Legal History: A Neglected Dialogue,” was to explain how legal theory may be enriched, informed, or challenged, by engaging with historical research, and how legal theory can in turn contribute invaluable conceptual resources for legal historians to draw on.

Rose’s interests include medieval and early modern English legal history, and his research focuses on the history and regulation of the legal profession and the operation of the medieval legal system. Rose has also written on early defamation law, medieval prisons, and the historiography of legal history.