Dr Lorren Eldridge

We still have funding available for travel and accom for PG students attending this conference. Includes those just finished (2024/5) or are about to start (2025/6) a course of study, and Bar course as well as uni.

Get in touch ASAP via email if you would like to apply.

If they are pursuing further study involving any kind of legal history, they can check out our postgraduate mentoring scheme!

Selden's Sister has launched an essay competition for undergraduates interested in legal history.

£100 @hartpublishing.bsky.social vouchers up for grabs, as well as an invitation to receive your prize at our annual lecture - this year at the University of Nottingham. #legalhistory

Have you registered, yet? A reminder to register for the 1925 centenary conference in Cambridge in September before you go on your summer holidays!

Please also help share the conference with any interested postgraduates: we have made provision for postgraduate bursaries to help with travel and accommodation. Further information about that, including the application form, can also be found on the webpage.

We suggest registering promptly, as we are expecting a lot of demand for this event. There is a modest fee. Accommodation may also be booked at the conference venue, Selwyn College, via the link on the webpage.

2025 Conference: Celebrating 100 Years of the 1925 Property Legislation

Registration is now open to attend the conference Celebrating 100 Years of the 1925 Property Legislation at Selwyn College, Cambridge on 8-9 September 2025.

The draft programme and booking link may be found on the conference webpage: www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/news/2025-co...

Wrapping up UG teaching for my 1st Cambridge year today, and what an insanely busy one. Teaching across 3 UG papers, LLM students, and PhD projects. Queens' has felt like home fast, and next year looks great: September kicks off with the 1925 Property Conference (and our wedding at Queens'!).

Tomorrow 7pm UK time, Matthew Dyson, Ashley Hannay and I are speaking about teaching legal history in England and Wales. The chapter we've written for an upcoming comparative volume involved empirical research across English/Welsh law schools, and reflects on future directions for the discipline.

First one of these is tomorrow evening. There will be some juicy content in letters from the 1920s. There will be profound insults. There will be political backstabbing. All good fun.

Enjoy land law? Want to hear me wax lyrical about how great Benjamin Cherry was, and how he drafted the LPA 1925 and its sibling statutes? There will be archives, intense political bargaining, and hot takes from Edwardian lawyers.

Cambridge 20 May (hybrid)

Oxford 27 May (in person)

And I’m “plague” as far as the volume is concerned 😁

Another week, another proof. My piece on The Statute of Labourers and Contract Law, in 'Epidemics and the Law from Plague to Present' is a bit of old-school doctrinal medieval legal history.

But, of course, it's me, so it has a cheeky twist... Out Sept 2025.

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/epidemics...

My chapter reflects on the Global Legal Histories course I developed at @uoelawschool.bsky.social from '22-4. The GLH course was fun and interesting - from @sententiaepauli.bsky.social initial idea, great students who put in a lot of effort. Now ably taken over by @cowan-lisacowan.bsky.social .

Legal History in the Curriculum: Comparative Perspectives, Critical Approaches and Future Directions As legal education faces fresh challenges and opportunities, and a growing literature calls for subversive new approaches, this book engages with vital questions about the place of history in the law ...

Truly, 'tis publication season, and I'm excited to see that you can now pre-order Caroline Derry and Carol Howells' edited volume on 'Legal History in the Curriculum' - out this July.

www.routledge.com/Legal-Histor...

We're almost finished putting together the first Selden's Sister book - and Celebrating Women in Legal History (Hart) is looking gorgeous. We can't wait to share the range of creative, fascinating, and unexpected chapters in the volume with the #legalhistory community.

2025 Conference: Celebrating 100 Years of the 1925 Property Legislation

🎉 100 years ago today, the 1925 property legislation completed its Parliamentary journey (in force 1 January 1926).

CFP for our Cambridge centenary event open until 1 May. Proposals welcome from all career stages, including PhD/ECRs, and practitioners.

www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/cambridge-ce...

I've got a pile of books awaiting review for the Conveyancer and Property Lawyer, on Equity; private law theory; and public/private law intersection. If you'd be interested, drop me a DM/email whether PhD/ECR, practitioner, or experienced academic. Usually comes with a free hardback copy!

Westlaw users can find it here: uk.westlaw.com/Document/I45...

#Landlaw nerds may enjoy my guest Editorial in the latest Conveyancer and Property Lawyer (now available online), where I - of course - talk about the centenary of the 1925 legislation.

I’ll have a Denning special, but make it kind of Hale-flavoured.

Actually did that irl once, got some very pissed bad solicitors (who had given wrong advice to family member). “Resulting trust, do your jobs” 🎤 Glamorous life, this.

Currently (really) contemplating marrying my partner of 13 yrs purely because we may sell our Scottish house and buy in England.

Can’t imagine would be extended to unmarried couples or wife->husband, given the distaste, also would really mess up CICT case law and that’s dirty enough already. Generally if exam, I’d think consider it if it falls under a traditional category, dismiss as weak, get on with real analysis.

Other way: from either parent you’d have a weak presumption of advancement, but easily rebutted, if rebutted you’d use a RT, or perhaps more likely a CICT. Unless someone’s dead (or maybe even not dead?), then you end up using proprietary estoppel. Love trusts of land - utter chaos.

No, and Laskar is from 2008 anyway, but I think there’s a general sense nobody wants to be using presumption of advancement as basis for a case - exception being lazy high st solicitors who seem to love it as an excuse not to get into CICT analysis.

Presumption of advancement might not be so simple as that post-Laskar, which suggests it should easily be rebutted, especially where case concerns a child over 18 and independent. Plus common sense impact that abolition is waiting on the books in s.199 EA 2010, although not in force at present.

Ah, well - we can't win them all (personally don't get on well with public law!).

At least you can recognise it: as with any law, it would be preferable if people in politics who have no idea what they're talking about didn't keep insisting on saying silly things, but that's de rigueur.

FWIW, land law *can* be taught in an interesting and engaging way. Plenty who teach land don't actually like doing so, but must do it so the uni has teaching cover, which transmits to students.

And that, of course, is part of how we regularly end up with utterly nonsense headlines like this.

More "feudal-era system" nonsense. People just need to stop writing this as if it is informative analysis. Leasehold is probably one of the less "feudal" parts of English land law. The real, live & kicking, feudalism is in freehold. You don't own your fee simple absolute—you hold it from the King.

Contesting Conquests – HDR Scholarship Opportunity - Flinders University

Want to do a fully funded PhD on medieval English historiography? Well do I have an opportunity for you! See the attached ad and get in touch ASAP if you're interested (and please share widely).