The essays in Communities and Courts in Britain, 1150-1900 all reflect the wider concept of legal history - how legal processes fitted into the social and political life of the community and how courts and other legal processes were used by contemporaries. In doing so they aim both to justify the study of legal history in its own right and to show how legal records, including those of a variety of central and local courts, can be used to further our understanding of a wide range of social, commercial, popular and political history.