Legal Records Jamboree

On 26 June 2023 Professor Chantal Stebbings and Professor Rebecca Probert both gave presentations at the Legal Records Jamboree. Hosted at the National Archives, the event was an opportunity to celebrate the rich range of archival sources that underpin legal historical research and included over three dozen speakers.

Each speaker was invited to identify a specific record and explain its significance to their research. Rebecca spoke about a file of correspondence from the 1950s that revealed the behind-the-scenes discussions about a seemingly technical point of law with potentially huge and embarrassing consequences for members of the Royal Family, a topic dealt with in her 2011 book The Rights and Wrongs of Royal Marriages.

Chantal’s source was a handbook issued to surveyors of taxes that revealed the implementation of the revenue practice which came to dominate tax law, a topic she specifically addressed in an article in 2016, ‘The Equity of the Executive’ (in PG Turner, ed., Equity and Administration, CUP 2016, pp. 258-87).