Maitland: State, Trust and Corporation

The essays collected in State, Trust and Corporation contain the reflections of England’s greatest legal historian on the legal, historical and philosophical origins of the idea of the state. All written in the first years of the twentieth century, Maitland’s essays are classics both of historical writing and of political theory. They contain a series of profound insights into the way the character of the state has been shaped by the non-political associations that exist alongside it, and their themes are of continuing relevance today. This is the first new edition of these essays for sixty years, and the first of any kind to contain full translations, glossary and expository introduction. It has been designed to make Maitland’s writings fully accessible to the non-specialist, and to make available to anyone interested in the idea of the state some of the most important modern writings in English on that subject.

Author Biography

Frederic William Maitland (1850-1906): late Downing Professor of the Laws of England in the University of Cambridge, arguably the greatest of all British historians, and a major voice in political theory. University Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Cambridge and author of Pluralism and the Personality of the State (Cambridge, 1997). Lecturer in Late Medieval Studies at the Warburg Institute, London, and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford