Author: Tom Lambert File Type: pdf Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King AEthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities. The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order what constituted good order what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it what roles kings, lords, communities, and individuals were expected to play in maintaining it and how that worked in practice. Its core argument is that the Anglo-Saxons had a coherent, stable, and enduring legal order that lacks modern analogies it was neither state-like nor stateless, and needs to be understood on its own terms rather than as a variant or hybrid of these models. Tom Lambert elucidates a distinctively early medieval understanding of the tension between the interests of individuals and communities, and a vision of how that tension ought to be managed that, strikingly, treats strongly libertarian and communitarian features as complementary. Potentially violent, honour-focused feuding was an integral aspect of legitimate legal practice throughout the period, but so too was fearsome punishment for forms of wrongdoing judged socially threatening. Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England charts the development of kings involvement in law, in terms both of their authority to legislate and their ability to influence local practice, presenting a picture of increasingly ambitious and effective royal legal innovation that relied more on the cooperation of local communal assemblies than kings sparse and patchy network of administrative officials. **

Author: Irene L. Gendzier File Type: pdf In her groundbreaking analysis of the origins and evolution of U.S. policy toward the Middle East from 1945 to 1949, Irene L. Gendzier presents incontrovertible evidence that oil politics played a significant role in the founding of Israel, the policy adopted by the United States toward Palestinians, and subsequent U.S. involvement in the region. Consulting declassified U.S. government sources, as well as papers in the H.S. Truman Library, Gendzier uncovers little-known features of U.S. involvement in the region, including significant exchanges in the winter and spring of 1948 between the director of the Oil and Gas Division of the Interior Department and the representative of the Jewish Agency in the United States, months before IsraelOs independence and recognition by President Truman. She also shows that U.S. consuls and representatives abroad informed State Department officials, including the Secretary of State and the President, of the deleterious consequences of partition in Palestine. In documenting this dimension of U.S. policy, her work complements that of Palestinian historians as well as IsraelOs ONew HistoriansO of 1948. The attempt to reconsider partition and replace it with a UN trusteeship for Palestine failed, however, jettisoned by IsraelOs declaration of independence. The results altered the regional balance of power and WashingtonOs calculations of policy toward the new state. Prior to that, as GendzierOs work reveals, the U.S. endorsed the repatriation of Palestinian refugees in accord with UNGA Res 194 of Dec. 11, 1948, in addition to the resolution of territorial claims, the definition of boundaries, and the internationalization of Jerusalem. Yet instead of implementing the resolutions U.S. officials insisted were key to resolving the conflict, the United States deferred to Israel to assure its pro-Western support in the protection of U.S. oil interests in the Middle East.