Legal textbooks in the colony of NSW
How would a person in NSW in the 1800s find out what the law was? It is one thing to say that the
law of England applied, quite another to find the answer to a particular legal question.
Part of the answer is that Judges and practitioners used legal textbooks to research the law. They
sometimes went further and cited textbooks as authority for propositions of law in their own right.
This project is an attempt to identify the legal textbooks that were available in the colony of New
South Wales. This has been done by examining the textbooks which were cited in reported
judgments from the period, a kind of ‘reverse engineering’. These reported judgments provide a
representative sample of cases.
I have searched the following law reports for references to legal textbooks (including abridgments
and digests):
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Kercher Reports (1788-1827)
Dowling’s Select Cases (1828-1844)
Legge’s Reports (1825-1862)
I have compiled an alphabetical list of cited textbooks, noting the cases in which they were cited.
Extracts from the reports have been included to show the context of the citation.
I have also compiled chronological list, arranged by case. This notes all the textbooks cited in the
case, again with extracts from the report to show the context in which the book was cited.
A list of the most cited textbooks has also been included.
It would not have been possible to undertake this research without the work of Bruce Kercher, Tim
Castle, Brent Salter and all who contributed to the publication of the Kercher Reports and Dowling’s
Select Cases. I would also like to thank Justice Geoff Lindsay for his support and encouragement.
This is a work in progress. There are still a few citations to unravel (e.g. ‘Arch’ could refer to one of
many textbooks by Archbold) and there is further analysis to be done. It has been made available on
the Forbes Society website so that it may be used by others interested in Australian legal history.
Comments and suggestions are welcome: larissa.reid@gmail.com
Larissa Reid
Law Librarian
BA, MIM (Library & Information Management)