- published: 13 Oct 2013
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Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history. Among certain jurists and historians of legal process it has been seen as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts, some consider it a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth century historians have viewed legal history in a more contextualized manner more in line with the thinking of social historians. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society. Such legal historians have tended to analyze case histories from the parameters of social science inquiry, using statistical methods, analyzing class distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, number of settled cases they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that give us a more complex picture of law and society than the study of jurisprudence, case law and civil codes can achieve.
Tommy Sheridan (born 7 March 1964, Glasgow) is a Scottish socialist politician. He has had various prominent roles within the socialist movement in Scotland and is currently one of two co-convenors of the left-wing Scottish political party Solidarity.
Sheridan was active as a Militant tendency entryist in the Labour Party, before leaving Labour as a member of Scottish Militant Labour (SML). He was a prominent campaigner against the poll tax in Scotland, and was jailed for six months for attending a warrant sale after Glasgow Sheriff Court had served a court order on him banning his presence. Sheridan has twice been jailed in connection with campaigning against the presence of the nuclear fleet at Faslane Naval Base - a presence which continues.
In 2006 in the case of Sheridan v News International he won an action for defamation against the News of the World and was awarded £200,000 damages. The following year, he was charged with perjury, for having told lies to the court in the defamation case. In the following weeks, six of his relations and colleagues were also charged. In October 2010, he appeared together with his wife Gail at a trial for perjury. While the charges against his wife were withdrawn, on 23 December 2010, Sheridan was convicted of perjury, and on 26 January he was sentenced to three years imprisonment. In the light of the News of the World phone hacking affair, the Crown Office has been ordered to reassess the case. He was released from prison on 30 January 2012, one year into his sentence.