Really excited for @zacharyherz.bsky.social's new book, The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories, out now with Studies in Legal History at CUP. 1/6

A very nice write up for the McGlothlin Award

I was honored to receive this at the law school graduation ceremony yesterday. Congratulations to the William & Mary Law School class of 2025!

Happy to do this for the grads and families. I'm glad so many people are interested in the history of the law school. Enough people signed up that we had to split it into two tours today!

Extremely pleased to announce (and first ever post here) that Danica Summerlin and my special issue on 'law beyond the legal renaissance', funded by @britishacademy.bsky.social, is now out, with open access introduction www.tandfonline.com/toc/flgh20/4... .

And link to my own article: Politics from Law or Law as Politics? Hugh of Poitiers’s Chronica and the Politics of ius in the Mid-twelfth Century www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I was thrilled to learn, just before Christmas, that I was elected to the American Law Institute. Many thanks to the colleagues who nominated me!

Sometimes working with manuscripts gets us really, really close to the people from the past allowing us to hear their voices. This is a story of a letter from a schoolgirl to her teacher, written probably sometime at the end of the 9th or the beginning of the 10th century. A thread 🧵 #medievalsky /1

Murder at the Medieval Mill Medieval millers were not always well liked and it’s not uncommon to read in criminal court records that a miller had been killed. This person leaving a windmill sure looks like they regret doing something nefarious at the mill with the mallet they're holding. 🧵1/5

I'm chairing this search, and we're really eager for applicants!

Happy Birthday, Phi Beta Kappa! 248 years ago today, on December 5th, 1776, a group of William & Mary students met at the Raleigh Tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street and established Phi Beta Kappa. The original minutes, running from 1776 to 1781, are held by Swem Library.

Happy birthday, William & Mary Law School! On December 4th, 1779, the Board of Visitors met and reorganized the college, establishing a chair in law, the first in the United States. From the Virginia Gazette, December 18, 1779.

Correcting errors in medieval records: You listed the wrong person as a killer in a court record. What do you do? Well, you could draw a line through the name, as the clerk did in this homicide case from 1255 when he accidentally listed Walter le Stock as the killer instead of Walter Stuttuk. 🧵1/4

Do you want to stay up to date with scholarship on late medieval economic and social history? @stephemmabrown.bsky.social's review of the literature published in 2023 is now available at Economic History Review doi.org/10.1111/ehr.... #MedievalSky #EconHist

Medieval villages were often tasked with transporting people to gaol. This could be dangerous and expensive business. Friends and family of criminals could try to free the person through violence or bribery. And if a captive escaped, then the village would collectively be fined £5–£8! 🧵1/5

I've put together a legal history starter pack for anyone interested in the history of crime & punishment, law, policing, social control, and violence. Please let me know if you want to (or know someone who should) be added to the list. go.bsky.app/Vg4M4V5

Proud and happy to share that my first book 'Marginalized Religion and the Law in the Roman Empire' (based on my PhD research) will be out with OUP this December! Interested? Pre-order now via global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Reading some 11th-century charters

Agnes, daughter of Stephen, was accidentally killed when she was struck by the sail of a windmill in Herringswell, Suffolk, sometime around the year 1240. Accidents such as these (death by the arm of the windmill) are not common in the records I use in my research🧵1/3...

British Library digitized manuscripts available again! www.bl.uk/research/dig... #History 🗃️

Did you know that the Marquis de LaFayette had a law degree from William & Mary? I got to help out with the translation of the diploma. news.wm.edu/2024/09/27/l...

Had a great conversation with the Ius Commune podcast about my book, Priests of the Law.

Meghan Woolley and I are editing a collection titled Emotions, Law, and Performance in England c.500-1500. Check out the CFP and get in touch if you're interested in contributing: legalhistorymiscellany.com/call-for-pap...

We had a reception for graduation award recipients yesterday, so I set this out for the students who were being inducted into the Order of the Coif. Congratulations, class of 2024!

Who was using the Court of Chancery during the civil wars and interregnum (1640-1660)? What sort of cases were brought? Want to find out? Applications now open for a funded PhD studentship supervised by David Foster (UCL Laws) and myself (TNA). www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DHI516/a...

Ducks keep appearing on my name plate. Some of the new ones appear to be royal. And I'm pretty sure the guy on the end is a spy.

Just did my annual reading of the Legend of Dancing Point to try to break the tension before my students started their property exam. It's about a local property dispute between Phillip Lightfoot and the Devil. As you might expect, they settled it with a dancing competition.

The American Society for Legal History announces a new dissertation prize! The Max Planck–ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in Global Perspective: -3 month fellowship at the Planck Institute in Frankfurt -€2,500 stipend -insurance, travel and housing allowance Instructions below

Delighted to report the oldest attestation of the phrase "silly goose" I've ever seen This Old Norse skaldic stanza (ca. 1300) calls a man a fool for refusing to learn about the law. He's called a "gassi", lit: a goose

I think Frank Herbert really missed the opportunity to explore some of the most important implications of the power to see every possible future at once. For instance, it would make you really good at solving rule against perpetuities problems. #Dunepropertylaw

I had a nice surprise yesterday: I found a positive review of my book by David Ibbetson in the LQR that I had missed: "Tom McSweeney has produced a first-class work, opening up new lines of inquiry into the development of the common law in the latter part of the 13th century."

In 13th-century England, a defendant who had been summoned to appear in court could, in certain types of cases, claim the essoin (excuse) of bed-sickness, claiming he was too ill to rise from his bed. He would be given a delay of a year and a day. But what do you do in a leap year? 1/2

It's 1200, and you're the Abbot of Ramsey (congrats!). At Lent your tenants come calling with their annual rents of preserved eels. - 60,000 from Welles - 4,000 from Chatteris - 125 from Little Bedford - 5260 from Wisbeck etc. So what do you do with all of these eels? 1/4 🧪🗃️

February 8, 1693: "it shall be called and denominated, forever, the College of William and Mary, in Virginia." Happy Charter Day!

One of my favourite medieval laws: Concerning vampires (strigis), which do not exist, no inquiry shall be made. (From the early 12th-century Laws of King Coloman of Hungary, c.57)

Yesterday, I gave a presentation to the Colonial Williamsburg courthouse interpreters on county courts in Colonial Virginia (and how they were different from English courts). As a thank you, they took me up in the cupola of the capitol building!

Funded PhDs! Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1790 by Jane Whittle and @lsangha.bsky.social is recruiting two fully funded PhDs to start September, one on gender and material culture and one on global commodities #EarlyModern www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin... www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

My latest piece, on the discussions of appeals in Magna Carta, is out. A lot of people gave me really good comments, but I want to especially thank Dick Helmholz and Charlie Donahue. In this article I disagree with some arguments they’ve made, but they were incredibly gracious about it.

#OnThisDay 9 January 1649 the House of Commons voted that the existing Great Seal of England should be broken up and a new one engraved by which the authority of the House of Lords was no longer recognised. Copy of the Commonwealth Great Seal in our collection. #17thCentury #OTD

I went to the dedication of the George Wythe Library at the Law School last night and guess who I met: George Wythe!

Still have mine.

This is a hugely exciting project: work towards comprehensive coverage of *all* VCH Big Red Books on @bho.bsky.social! Thanks to the Marc Fitch Fund and @ihr.bsky.social for funding this important endeavour. Stay tuned for updates!

The 10th book in OUP's Law & Literature series has a cover @elisewang.bsky.social, The Making of Felony Procedure in Middle English Literature global.oup.com/academic/pro... / @mpilhlt.bsky.social @long18thsem.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social @ihr.bsky.social @lpcprof.bsky.social

King Edgar presenting Christ with the charter for the protection of the community of New Minister. BL Cotton MS Vespasian A VIII; Refoundation charter of the New Minster, Winchester ; 966 CE; Benedictine Abbey of New Minster, Winchester; f.2v

👋 Seems like the best day yet to introduce myself here! I'm a law prof specializing in fed courts, civil-rights litigation & structural con law. (I also ❤️ teaching civ pro & state & local govt.) I have 3 kids who occasionally say & do hilarious things. Check out my research here! ⬇️

Morning everyone - my book on royal justice, the Court of Requests, and the early Tudors is out NOW for those with online access! Print publication to follow shortly... www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...

In a week, this amazing collection edited by Cerian Griffiths and me will be released by Routledge. More than two years of hard work. It was worth to see the results of the work of fifteenth authors from four continents! www.routledge.com/English-Law-...

Found these yesterday. The Christmas ducks seem to go up earlier every year at William & Mary Law School.

Alicia Lewyne was gaoled on suspicion of killing her husband William c.1275. After an inquest it was determined that Robert & Walter de Wylehale accused of her of the homicide because they were in a legal battle with her father over some land. William actually fell in a ditch while drunk & drowned.

I'm speaking at Leeds (and online) on Tuesday 14th Nov on regional ideas of property, marshland sit-in protests, and how to deal with sharp-elbowed neighbours in C12th England. All welcome! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thus-befor...