Edward Jenks
Edward Jenks University College, Liverpool |
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Edward Jenks, FBA (1861–1939) was an English jurist, and noted writer on law and its place in history. Born on 20 February 1861 in Lambeth, London, to Robert Jenks, upholsterer, and his wife Frances Sarah, née Jones, he was educated at Dulwich College (1874–77) and King's College, Cambridge, where he was scholar (1886) and, in 1889-95, fellow. He graduated B.A., LL.B. in 1886, and M.A. in 1890. He was awarded the Le Bas Prize and the Thirlwall Prize and was chancellor's medallist. In 1887 he was called to the Bar and for the next two years lectured at Pembroke and Jesus colleges, Cambridge.[1]
He was a brilliant law student at King's College, Cambridge and was placed first in the law
He held many seats: Director of Studies in Law and History at
Jenks was a Fellow of the British Academy. He was a founder of the Society of Public Teachers of Law and its secretary 1909-1917.
He married first in 1890 to Annie Ingham, who died after giving birth to a son; the son would die fighting in the Great War. His second marriage in 1898 was to Dorothy Maud, a daughter of Sir William Bower Forwood, with whom he had a daughter, and a son Jorian Jenks.
Jenks wrote a number of books and essays dealing with law, politics and history. He was the principal editor of A Digest of English Civil Law (1905–1917) which led to receipt of an honorary doctorate from Paris. After two further editions in his lifetime (1921 and 1938), the fourth edition (1947), edited in his place by
Edward Jenks is most famous for his iconoclastic essay The Myth of Magna Carta published in the Independent Review in 1904.[3] Jenks argued against Stubbs's proposition that Magna Carta was the first corporate act of the nation roused to the sense of its unity, when the people of the towns and villages ranged themselves on the side of the barons against the king for the first time since the Norman Conquest.
Partial bibliography
- The Government of Victoria (Australia) (1891)
- The History of the Doctrine of Consideration in English Law (1892) (Yorke Prize essay 1891)
- A History of Politics 4th edition (1910)
- A Short History Of The English Law, 1st edition (1912)
- Law and Politics in the Middle Ages 2nd edition (1913)
- An Outline of English Local Government 5th edition (1921)
- Edward Plantagenet (Edward I) : The English Justinian or the making of the common law (1923)
- A Short History of English Law 5th edition (1934)
- The State and the Nation revised edition (1935)
- The Book of English Law 4th edition (1936)
- The Government of the British Empire 5th edition (1937)
References
- ^ Campbell, Ruth in Australian Dictionary of Biography, MUP, 1983
- ^ A digest of English civil law, by Edward Jenks, (editor) W. M. Geldart, W. S. Holdsworth, R. W. Lee, J. C. Miles. London, Butterworth, 1905-1917.[1]
- ^ Max Radin The Myth of Magna Carta Harvard Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 7 (Sep., 1947), pp. 1060-1091.[2]
Entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
External links
