This article traces the coming of apparent authority in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some confusion exists about the origins of this rule. It is often suggested that the doctrine has theoretical and historical roots in estoppel as an extension of actual authority. This article provides strong evidence that the apparent authority was - and should be thought of as - a true form of authority that grew out of developments in contract law rather than the rules of equity. This analysis contributes to the intellectual understanding of the history of commercial law and the law of agents.

The received version of Lord Eldon's conception of equity is often extracted from decisions such as Gee v. Pritchard (1818), describing equity as a settled set of fixed principles almost as uniform as those of the Common Law. Yet, as has been noted in recent scholarship, this version does not do justice to Eldon's multi-layered views. This article re-examines Eldon's subtleties by reference to Eldon's manuscripts now held by Georgetown University Law Library. These include Eldon's judicial notebooks and a series of essays styled 'Lectures' (likely written while he was acting deputy to the 'Vinerian Professor of Common Law' at Oxford). The article demonstrates that the received view is indeed not sufficiently 'nuanced' to provide a fully satisfactory explanation of Eldon's approach to equity. Eldon does seem to have been fundamentally conflicted about the dividing line between law and equity. His overall preference for the certainty of positive law perhaps reflects his law-equity ambivalence (an ambivalence mirrored by some of his judicial contemporaries).

Historically, the clear recognition by the courts that all adults in public intercourse owe a duty of reasonable care to avoid injuring others has been seen as an early nineteenth century development. Occasionally it is recognized that what is known about the emergence of the tort of negligence in English law comes almost entirely from the printed reports of civil (plea side) cases tried in the three common law courts (King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer). It was not until the 1790s that regular printed reports of jury trials (or nisi prius cases, as they were called) began, and even then, enlightenment from the nisi prius reports was limited. Most of those reports were sketchy, and very few included instructions given to the jury by the trial judge. More importantly, the reports covered only a small fraction of the jury trials that were conducted by the common law courts. The overwhelming majority of civil jury trials ended with the jury verdict (or an occasional nonsuit), with no post-trial proceedings, and what happened in many thousands of these plea-side jury trials in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been something of a black hole in the historical record.

The origins of the internal management debate and business judgment rule in Anglo-American corporate law can be traced to the landmark case of Carlen v Drury (1812). Through the use of new manuscript sources and archival material, this article offers a deeper analysis of the case than has previously been available. It reveals a number of allegations omitted by the printed reports. By placing the case within its wider historical context, the article attributes Lord Chancellor Eldon’s decision to dismiss the case to external circumstances rather than the particular merits of the shareholders’ complaints. It shows that, although Eldon did not intervene in this instance, he was, in fact, willing to interfere in disputes which related to corporate governance issues. We argue that this case should be used with caution as early courts were not as hostile to the thought of exercising judicial power as the outcome in Carlen v Drury may suggest.

On June 29, 1789, Zephaniah Turner of Charles County, Maryland, wrote to President George Washington and observed:Our Laws are too Numerous. Is it not possible that an alteration might take place for the benefit of the public?…Could it not be possible to curtail the Number of Lawyers in the different States? Suppose each State was to have but Two Lawyers to be paid liberally…[and] where a real dispute subsisted between Plaintiff and Defendant a reference [to arbitration] should be proposed, and arbitrators [be] indifferently chosen by both parties…whose determination shall be final.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, England and France were continuously at war. Such upheaval naturally upset the maritime trade between England and the Continent. Although there had been free-trade voices in the eighteenth century who thought trade even with enemies made commercial sense, by the end of the eighteenth century, the law clearly held that trading with the enemy was illegal. Strict adherence to the legal prohibition against trading with the enemy, however, would have devastated British commerce. It was in this environment that the British license system had been born. A license was a grant from the crown that allowed its holder to trade with the enemy. To supplement the license, simulated papers were used to evade capture and condemnation by the enemy. The use of simulated papers was acknowledged in courts of law, and marine insurance policies expressly authorized journeys that used simulated papers. Indeed, the underwriters sometimes refused to insure unless false papers were used.Courts protected merchants by allowing them to recover under insurance policies, as long as those policies expressly allowed the use of simulated papers. The rationale was that this was necessary to protect British commerce. At first, the benefits of such policies applied only to British merchants, but in the early 1810s, first the Admiralty Court, then the common law courts, expanded the construction of insurance policies to benefit alien neutrals, and eventually alien enemies. The irony of these developments was that the end result in practical effect came close to the free trade voices that had later been crowded out by case law.

In 1848, Parliament created the Court for Crown Cases Reserved, in which all of the common law judges heard and decided questions reserved by trial judges in criminal cases. As Sir John Baker explains, this was “a court of record, which would now sit in public and give reasons for its decisions,” even though “the reservation of cases was still at the discretion of the trial judge and the court did not have the powers of the court en banc in civil cases.”

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The infamous Zong case played an instrumental part in the abolition movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it is well known to historians of the slave trade. Not so well known, however, are the characteristics and practices of insuring slave cargo. Also the full story of the Zong incident and the subsequent litigation in the court of King's Bench has never been told. This article first explains the manner in which the standard Lloyd's marine insurance policy was understood by ship owners and merchants. Special adaptations for slave cargo are then examined, such as the circumstances in which the loss of slave cargo would not be covered because not due to 'perils of the sea', and exclusions for slave insurrections. Finally, the Zong case itself is explored, as enlarged by scarce and newly-discovered documentary sources. Two surprises emerge: that the words used in the printed Lloyd's marine insurance policy did not necessarily mean what they said; and that the legal strategy employed in the court of King's Bench on behalf of the owners was seriously flawed.

Radio-frequency glow-discharge plasma polymer thin films of allylamine (AA) and hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) were prepared on silicon wafers and analyzed by a combination of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray reflectometry (XRR), and neutron reflectometry (NR). AFM and XRR measurements revealed uniform, smooth, defect-free films of 20-30 nm thickness. XPS measurements gave compositional data on all elements in the films with the exception of hydrogen. In combination with XRR and NR, the film composition and mass densities (1.46 and 1.09 g cm(-)(3) for AA and HMDSO, respectively) were estimated. Further NR measurements were conducted with the AA and HMDSO films in contact with water at neutral pH. Three different H(2)O/D(2)O mixtures were used to vary the contrast between the aqueous phase and the polymer. The amount of water penetrating the film, as well as the number of labile protons present, was determined. The AA film in contact with water was found to swell by approximately 5%, contain approximately 3% water, and have approximately 24% labile protons. The HDMSO polymer was found to have approximately 6% labile protons, no thickness increase when in contact with water, and essentially no solvent penetration into the film. The difference in the degree of proton exchange within the films was attributed to the substantially different surface and bulk chemistries of the two films.

[reaction: see text] Oxidation of alkyl and cycloalkyl arenes with tert-butyl hydroperoxide catalyzed by bismuth and picolinic acid in pyridine and acetic acid gave the corresponding benzylic ketones (48-99%). Alternatively, oxidation of methyl arenes gave the corresponding substituted benzoic acids (50-95%). Preliminary mechanistic studies were consistent with a radical mechanism rather than a bismuth(III)-bismuth(V) cycle.

The refrain that law and equity cannot peaceably cohabit the same court is familiar and persistent. In his 1790 treatise on contracts, Joseph Powell protested that blending law and equity was “subversive of first principles.” He claimed, “That a right in itself purely legal cannot be the proper subject of discussion in a jurisdiction purely equitable, and that a right purely equitable, cannot be the proper subject of a purely legal jurisdiction, are axioms that cannot be denied,” adding for good measure: “It is a proposition as self-evident as that black is not red, or white black.” Almost two centuries later, in a provocative 1974 essay called The Death of Contract, Grant Gilmore asserted that the legal doctrine of consideration in contract law and the equitable doctrine of promissory estoppel were like “matter and anti-matter,” and “The one thing that is clear is that these two contradictory propositions cannot live comfortably together: in the end one must swallow the other up.”