Criminal trial procedure in eighteenth century England: The impact of lawyers.

© 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd.David Lemming

Mediatization of Emotion on Social Media: Forms and Norms in Digital Mourning Practices

This article provides the theoretical background for this Special Issue which explores the mediatization of emotion on social media as attested in different digital mourning practices. The overview discusses the affective and emotional turn alongside the mediatic turn in relation to key trends and foci in the study of affect/emotion. Our discussion points to a shift in conceptualizations of affect/emotion from mediated to mediatized practice, embedded in other social practices and subject to media and social media logics, affordances, and frames, which are worthy of empirical investigation. The article also presents key insights offered in the four articles of this Special Issue and foregrounds current and future directions in the study of mediatization, emotional sharing, and digital mourning practices

Political trials and the suppression of popular radicalism in England, 1799-1820

This chapter examines the decision-making process between the Home Office and the government’s law officers in prosecuting individuals for sedition and treason in the period 1799–1820. The term state trial suggests a more centralised and government-led repression of popular radicalism than the process was in practice. Provincial reformers also faced the complex layers of their local justice system, which was more loyalist, committed to stamping out political radicalism. The trial of the “Thirty Eight” Manchester radicals in June 1812 demonstrates the mutable definitions of treason, sedition and processes of justice in the theatre of the court.Peer reviewe

Marriage and the law in the eighteenth century: Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753

ABSTRACTThis article is an analysis of the hysterical debates in the house of commons over the 1753 Marriage Act, placed in the context of the failure of existing marriage law to prevent clandestine marriage and bigamy, and the crucial importance of the marriage market for the male propertied elite. It shows that the proponents of the act appealed strongly to the patriarchal and material instincts of the majority in the Commons, while its principal opponents, who claimed to stand for affective marriage and championed the interests of women, actually represented the exploitative marital and sexual behaviour typical of many Georgian men. The article concludes that the passage of the Marriage Act in these circumstances absolutely contradicts some historians' theories about the progress of ‘affective individualism’ among the elite, and implies rather the continuance of patriarchy and the use of marriage for economic and political advantage.</jats:p

Emotions, Power and Popular Opinion about the Administration of Justice: The English Experience, from Coke’s ‘Artificial Reason’ to the Sensibility of ‘True Crime Stories’

Tis article discusses emotions and power in the administration and representation of criminal justice in early modern England. In the early seventeenth century, professional lawyers insisted that only they were competent to understand the ‘arti cial reason’ of the common law; and lay opinion was associated with unreliable emotional engagement with the protagonists in trials. ‘Popular jurisprudence’ received renewed impetus from the post-Reformation emphasis on conscience and divine providence, however, and this kind of common sense interpretation often featured in popular accounts of law proceedings. Moreover, the ‘low law’ administered at grass roots level by JPs was less professionalised because most magistrates were not lawyers. The development of popular and emotional jurisprudence is demonstrated in the eighteenth century by analysis of judges’ charges, popular novels, and the reportage of ‘true crime’. Ultimately, and despite further ‘lawyerisation’ of trials, the article argues that the rise of the novel and increased press reporting of criminal justice generated more vicarious engagement with the administration of justice. And this was emotional engagement: eighteenth-century popular jurisprudence represented justice as variously awesome, theatrical, and unreasonably oppressive.David Lemming

Lee, Sir William (1688–1754), judge

David Lemmingshttp://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101016315

Law and government in England during the long eighteenth century: from consent to command

David Lemming