Davis' Criminal Law Consolidation Acts
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''The Criminal Law Consolidation Statutes of the 24 & 25 of Victoria, Chapters 94 to 100: Edited with Notes, Critical and Explanatory'' is a book about the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts 1861 written by
James Edward Davis James Edward Davis (1817 - 1887) was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1842, was stipendiary magistrate at Stoke upon Trent from 1864 to 1870, was police magistrate at Sheffield from 1870 to 1874, and was a friend of Leigh Hunt. Works D ...
and published by
Butterworths LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer inform ...
in
duodecimo Paper size standards govern the size of sheets of paper used as writing paper, stationery, cards, and for some printed documents. The ISO 216 standard, which includes the commonly used A4 size, is the international standard for paper size. I ...
in 1861. ''Davis' Criminal Law Consolidation Acts'' may for the purpose of citation be abbreviated to "Dav Cr Cons".


Criticism

The
Solicitors Journal ''Solicitors Journal'' is a monthly legal journal published in the United Kingdom by the International In-house Counsel Journal, Cambridge.
said that it would "be unreasonable to expect that Mr." Davis' "edition of these statutes, published within three months from the publication of the Acts themselves, and the production of his unassisted labour, should contain the same amount of information and practical utility as might be expected to be found in a work prepared and matured at leisure. In the edition before us the public are provided with the Acts themselves, in a convenient form, with an index; and by means of reference to the corresponding clauses of those statutes upon which the work of consolidation has proceeded, the professional man is furnished with a clue by means of which he may ascertain what the law in any analogous case was up to the passing of these Acts. The Acts are printed in the order in which they received the
Royal assent Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in other ...
, and an attempt has been made to distinguish by brackets those provisions which are introduced for the first time. It would, however, it is conceived, be unsafe for a practitioner to assume that the only alterations in the law made by these Acts are such as are made by the provisions marked as described; for in many instances, where no brackets occur, the subjoined note informs the reader that the section is ''nearly verbatim'', or that it is ''framed upon'' one or more statutes; and, obviously under such circumstances new words must occur, the operation of which upon the
construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and com ...
of the clause it must be extremely difficult to foretell. These distinguishing marks, however, though they may not be placed with perfect accuracy, materially contribute to the value of the book. The book also contains a table of offences and an introduction. Of the explanatory notes, except so far as they contain references to other analogous Acts as above noticed, we cannot speak with satisfaction. No method appears to have been pursued in the manner in which the matter contained in them is introduced. Sometimes cases in illustration of the text of the section are inserted; and sometimes, though there is an equal necessity for the insertion of such illustrations, and equal facility for supplying them, the editor, either from indolence or caprice, entirely omits them. It is unreasonable, perhaps, to expect to find, in a work published as this is, a history of the multifarious laws digested by the Acts, or a complete compilation from
reports A report is a document that presents information in an organized format for a specific audience and purpose. Although summaries of reports may be delivered orally, complete reports are almost always in the form of written documents. Usage In ...
and text-books, of the leading decisions with reference to analogous legislation, or a description of the evidence and procedure in relation to the offences provided against; but though full information upon these points might not have been expected, it is only reasonable to suppose that such a work as the present will systematically point out those channels wherein such information may be readily obtained. To have furnished references to such sources of information would have been an easy task, and would have added greatly to the practical utility of the book. It is a task, however, which Mr. Davis has not undertaken. With the exception, therefore, of the words on the title-page, "with notes critical and explanatory," the book neither contains any express promise that the task undertaken by its editor shall be performed in any particular manner, nor statement that it has been prepared for any definite purpose and no one who may be disappointed by its contents can complain that more has been promised by its editor than has been performed."(1861) 5
Solicitors Journal ''Solicitors Journal'' is a monthly legal journal published in the United Kingdom by the International In-house Counsel Journal, Cambridge.

836
/ref>


References

*The Criminal Law Consolidation Statutes of the 24 & 25 of Victoria, Chapters 94 to 100: Edited with Notes, Critical and Explanatory. Digitised copies from Google Book

and Internet Archiv

*The Jurist, New Series, Volume 7, Part 2, Old Series, Volume 25, Part 2
p 437
(9 November 1861) *Law Magazine and Law Review, or, Quarterly Journal of Jurisprudence, Volume 12, No 23
p 187
*(1861) 37 The Law Time
39
* Athenaeum (British magazine), Athenaeum: Journal of Literature, Science and the Fine Arts, July to December 1861, No 1776, 9 Nov
p 616
*Morning Star. {{Reflist Law books