A collection of some of the best papers presented at the 25th British Legal History Conference at Queen's University Belfast in July 2022, Law and Constitutional Change examines the role that law plays when countries experience a major constitutional upheaval. It examines the interaction of law and politics in history across different legal jurisdictions with different legal traditions. The theme of the conference was 'Law and Constitutional Change' and was inspired by the decade of anniversaries in Ireland (2012–2023) commemorating events from a century ago that began with the Home Rule Crisis and ended with the partition of the country. It studies the changes that occurred at that time in a wider British and Irish as well as international context, with a view to deepening understanding of contemporary debates such as those surrounding Brexit and its longer-term implications. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

‘This is an excellent collection. The chapters are more than the sum of their (already very impressive) parts. Collectively, they show the renaissance of interest in constitutional history; they highlight its scope, ambition and relevance. Law and Constitutional Change shows that constitutional history no longer resembles what it looked like and what functions it provided in its 19th century heyday. It is no longer one ‘top-down’ story of progress designed to stabilise and romanticise the status quo. In the hands of the authors of the chapters published here, constitutional history is a number of stories, a plethora of perspectives, that helps shed a light on issues of power, questioning what we know about our constitutional past and by implication our constitutional present. This is a must-read collection whose open access status means that its chapters should find their way to many a reading list, hopefully to inspire the constitutional historians of the future.’

Russell Sandberg Source: Public Law