Introduction

Law, History, Text is about the writing, and reading, of law. So, it makes sense to start with a discussion of methodology. More particularly, what makes legal history ironic? We will investigate three prospective qualities: ironism, anecdotalism, and ‘new’ historicism. The first embraces the idea that history might be a species of storytelling. The second embraces the particular and the curious in history. The third appreciates the contextuality of text. Having sketched the landscape of ironic history, we will then contemplate how it might challenge the dominant, commonly positivist, inscription of legal history. We close with some signposting, identifying particularities which animate each of the coming chapters: an institution, a writer, a place, and an ‘other’.