法律史新濠影汇线上赌场研究
Professor 大卫Seipp’s 16-year pursuit to help the Year Books—the origins of English and American law—reach a wider scholarly community.
大卫Seipp 总是对那些看起来比其他人想要完成的更大的项目充满激情。 The 波士顿大学法学院 Professor and Law 校友 Scholar has dedicated much of the past 16 years to compiling and refining his 年鉴数据库, English law reports collected between 1268 and 1535. 这些记录以手稿形式流传，直到15世纪才开始印刷，它们是用法律法语写成的，这是一种盎格鲁-诺曼语，在17世纪不再使用。 塞普所依据的这个版本在1678年至1680年间印刷了11卷。
作为一个整体，年鉴反映了现代普通法中公认的法律理论、概念和方法的发展。 这一巨大的学术成果对22,318条记录进行了索引和释义，为致力于追踪英美法律概念演变的法律史学家提供了一个可搜索的数据库。
起源
塞普在开始这个项目之前就看到了它的必要性。 As an undergraduate at Harvard University in the 1970s, he wrote his thesis on the history of the right to privacy in 19th century America. In his research, he came across the proverb, “a man’s house is his castle.” 出于好奇，他获得了牛津大学的奖学金，并前往伦敦探索这个短语的起源。
他沿路追溯到了1499年的一个案件，在这个案件中，一位法官使用了这句谚语。 这是他对年鉴的第一次介绍。 “I thought it was neat that I could trace it back that far,” he says. “But I wondered if the judge made it up or was quoting something well known at the time. I looked at these volumes of old cases and wondered if the proverb was there.”
他对后来成为美国法律基础的英国法律渊源的兴趣一直伴随着他，直到他从法学院毕业并加入了Foley Hoag律师事务所。 He kept a 1970s reprint of the Year Books on his desk, even though he says “it would have been bizarre if any legal matter had come to light that required someone finding out the law of 500 years ago or more; it’s unthinkable that I would have to go back that far as a practicing lawyer.”
1986年，当塞普开始在波士顿大学法学院任教时，他的新濠影汇线上赌场研究开始探索律师对法律的整体思考方式。 然后，他将其分解为主要组成部分，并进一步深入到本质上的1L课程，他追溯到罗马法学家盖尤斯的起源。 “For an article on how we think about the concept of property, I started thinking about the use of the word,” he says. 这种搜寻使他回到了熟悉的领域，他第一次——虽然不是最后一次——浏览了11卷《年鉴》。 他又写了几篇文章，经历了同样的过程。
“After passing through the Year Books three or four times and going through the old cases, I had the opportunity to embark on this project,” he says. With support from the 艾姆斯基金会, a legal history scholarly society based at Harvard Law School, Seipp set out translating, paraphrasing, and indexing the records.
每个案例都是谜题
对于每一份报告，塞普都构建了一个记录，他在其中记录了每个案件的属性，包括指定的当事人、律师和法官； 争议的性质； 重要的法律术语，提到的地方； 而且，如果适用的话，还可以与印刷该案例的现代学术版本进行交叉参考。
“It’s very satisfying work to do,” Seipp says, “although it requires a great deal of concentration. Each case is like a puzzle that needs to be solved, and there is the possibility that each case may contain a passage that nobody had focused on in many years and that might look interesting in ways nobody had noticed before.”
Seipp于2003年安排该项目在波士顿大学法律网站上进行托管。 最终的结果是一个巨大的、可搜索的年鉴数据库——一个平均每月吸引2300次搜索的免费资源。 这些学者来自许多领域，包括对英美法律起源感兴趣的法律历史学家，编辑引用中世纪案例的法律评论文章的法律学生，新濠影汇线上赌场研究家族史的系谱学家等等。
当他添加到数据库中时，他在早期的法庭诉讼中发现了一些奇怪的事情。 其中一个案件引起了人们的注意，其中一名律师像狗一样狂吠着回应他的对手。 In another case, the same lawyer sang a piece of a ballad in court: “Robin Hood in Barnsdale stood.” “Robin Hood scholars took up my database when it was available publicly and began to write about that line,” Seipp says. “It turns out it is probably the prototype of the earliest surviving Robin Hood ballad. Historians were able to reconstruct it from what that lawyer was saying and other odd manuscripts that make use of that first line.”
Seipp利用网上提供的新材料来识别晦涩的段落和名字，并为数据库的用户提供进一步的探索途径。 例如，每条记录都链接到文本的数字图像，因此新濠影汇线上赌场研究人员可以查看报告的原始法律法语。 “It was never my intention for this database to be a stopping point,” he says. “It is a research tool, a finding aid. I always encourage people to go to the early printed editions.”
赛普说，即使经过16年的努力，要提高该指数的效用，还有很多工作要做。 “There are additional cases beyond the chronological Year Books, alphabetically listed abridgments, that no one has focused on for centuries,” he says. “I’ve already prepped the very earliest records, going back to 1217, but I haven’t added them yet.” Before he completes those records, however, he’ll write a volume of the 《牛津英国法律史》. “Working on these cases one by one, it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees. I’ve been doing this leaf by leaf, so it will be nice to step back and take a larger view.”
Professor Seipp discusses the origins of his project and the editorial decisions made for the Year Books database in “Big 法律史 and the Hundred Year Test,” forthcoming in November in the 法律与历史评论.
