A History of Water Rights at Common Law

Joshua Getzler (Fellow and Tutor in Law at St Hugh's College, Oxford)

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English

Oxford University Press
01 April 2004

History: specific events & topics; Economic history; Water industries; Common law; Ownership & mortgage law; Personal property law

Series: Oxford Studies in Modern Legal History

Water resources were central to England's precocious economic development in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, and then again in the industrial, transport, and urban revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Each of these periods saw a great deal of legal conflict over water rights, often between domestic, agricultural, and manufacturing interests competing for access to flowing water. From 1750 the common-law courts developed a large but unstable body of legal doctrine, specifying strong property rights in flowing water attached to riparian possession, and also limited rights to surface and underground waters. The new water doctrines were built from older concepts of common goods and the natural rights of ownership, deriving from Roman and Civilian law, together with the English sources of Bracton and Blackstone. Water law is one of the most Romanesque parts of English law, demonstrating the extent to which Common and Civilian law have commingled. Water law stands as a refutation of the still-common belief that English and European law parted ways irreversibly in the twelfth century. Getzler also describes the economic as well as the legal history of water use from early times, and examines the classical problem of the relationship between law and economic development. He suggests that water law was shaped both by the impact of technological innovations and by economic ideology, but above all by legalism.

By: Joshua Getzler (Fellow and Tutor in Law at St Hugh's College Oxford)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 241mm, Width: 161mm, Spine: 27mm
Weight: 761g
ISBN: 9780198265818
ISBN 10: 0198265816
Series: Oxford Studies in Modern Legal History
Pages: 446
Publication Date: 01 April 2004
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , A / AS level
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Joshua Getzler is a Fellow and Tutor in Law at St Hugh's College, Oxford.

Reviews for A History of Water Rights at Common Law

`... the first comprehensive study of the history of English water law...a lucid account...[Getzler] seems equally at home in the medieval period... as with the later developments circa 1580-1750, or with the development of the modern law in the nineteenth century. The depth of learning is just as impressive as its scope, with copious references provided throughout. ...Primarily...this is a doctrinal legal history. It is not narrow in focus, and could not afford to be narrow given the complex conceptual stock for modern water law. ' Jonathan Morgan, Christ's College, Cambridge, Journal of Legal History