Abbatial Elections at Saint Florent-de-Saumur (ca. 950–1118)
Research into the origins of bishops is not new, but it has taken on increasing importance within the last twenty years. In 1965 an important introductory study of the social origins of French bishops between the years 1150 and 1350 appeared under the auspices of the Institut de Droit Canonique de Strassbourg. Since then, other studies on the origins of the French episcopate have followed. Despite the fact that these studies possess intrinsic value as manifestations of interest in the family and social origins, the method employed in them raises questions. It is the scope of the studies—not so much in terms of chronology as in numbers of bishops considered—that is problematic. The large numbers of candidates considered render scrutiny of individual candidates and electoral processes impossible.
English historical documents
English Historical Documents is the most ambitious, impressive and comprehensive collection of documents on English history ever published. An authoritative work of primary evidence, each volume presents material with exemplary scholarly accuracy. Editorial comment is directed towards making sources intelligible rather than drawing conclusions from them. Full account has been taken of modern textual criticism. A general introduction to each volume portrays the character of the period under review and critical bibliographies have been added to assist further investigation. Documents collected include treaties, personal letters, statutes, military dispatches, diaries, declarations, newspaper articles, government and cabinet proceedings, orders, acts, sermons, pamphlets, agricultural instructions, charters, grants, guild regulations and voting records. Volumes are furnished with lavish extra apparatus including genealogical tables, lists of officials, chronologies, diagrams, graphs and maps.
Exploring the Textual Alchemy of Legal Gender: Experimental Statutes and the Message in the Medium
This article draws on original empirical research to explore the politics of experimental feminist statutes. It has two main aims. First, it traces how conventional legislative drafting techniques have participated in the wider social creation and continuance of sex/gender norms. It shows how dominant statutory expressions of sex and gender that might otherwise appear timeless have shifted with social change and legal innovation. The article contributes to debates in feminist legal studies, legal anthropology, and legislative drafting by making visible, and analysing the particular power of legislative text, its ‘alchemy’, in expressing and re-creating sex/gender as a social, cultural and political artefact. Second, drawing on this research, the article explores what the Future of Legal Gender project might consider and do when drafting an experimental statute to decertify legal gender. Addressing questions of positionality, believability, legal form and the use of potentially innovative or contested drafting techniques (the singular “they”, the second person), the article explores tensions between legislative drafting and feminist legal method, as well as the benefits for bringing feminist analysis and perspectives to this important aspect of legal practice. Given that legislative drafting does not merely inscribe pre-agreed policy ideas into legal text but helps to shape emerging ontologies of gender, then drafting an experimental statute invites feminists to pay attention to interlinked questions of substance and form in the exploration of prefigurative legal futures.