This book considers how legal history has shaped and continues to shape our shared present. Each chapter draws a clear and significant connection to a meaningful feature of our lives today. Focusing primarily on England and Australia, contributions show the diversity of approaches to legal historys relevance to the present. Some contributors have a tight focus on legal decisions of particular importance. Others take much bigger picture overview of major changes that take centuries to register and where impact is still felt. The contributors are a mix of legal historians, practising lawyers, members of the judiciary, and legal academics, and develop analysis from a range of sources from statutes and legal treatises to television programs. Major legal personalities from Edward Marshall Hall to Sir Dudley Ryder are considered, as are landmarks in law from the Magna Carta to the Mabo Decision.

Sarah McKibbin is Lecturer (Law) in the School of Law and Justice, University of Southern Queensland, Australia, and co-author of A Legal History for Australia (2021) with Marcus Harmes and Libby Connors.

Jeremy Patrick is Lecturer in the School of Law and Justice, University of Southern Queensland, Australia. He has published multiple journal articles on historical aspects in the area of law and religion, including constitutional religion clauses, blasphemous libel, and the legal regulation of fortune-telling and individual spirituality.  He is author of Faith or Fraud: Fortune-telling, Spirituality, and the Law (2020).

Marcus Harmes is Professor, Associate Director Research in the University of Southern Queensland College, Australia, and teaches legal history in the law degree. He has published extensively in the fields of religious and political history, with a particular emphasis on British religious history and constitutional history.

Chapter 1:Introduction - Jeremy Patrick, Sarah McKibbin and Marcus Harmes.- Chapter 2: Politics and Profession: Sir Dudley Ryder and the Office of Attorney-General in England, 1689-1760 - Wilfrid Prest.- Chapter 3: Lord Atkins Dissent inLiversidge v Anderson Indecorously Orthodox? - Karen Schultz.- Chapter 4: The Challenges to the UK Constitution Since 1979 and Brexit - Michael Mulligan.- Chapter 5: The Age of Rumpoleis Past? Legal History on British Television - Marcus K Harmes, Meredith A Harmes, and Barbara Harmes.- Chapter 6: The History of Legal Marketing In Australia And New Zealand - Keith Thompson.- Chapter 7: The Historical Development of The Fault Basis of Liability in The Law of Torts - Anthony Gray.- Chapter 8: What Albert did and What Albert did next: Albert Bathurst Piddington The High Court Judge Who Never Sat - The Hon Justice A. S. Bell and James Monaghan.- Chapter 9: Path Dependency, the High Court, and the Constitution - Jeremy Patrick.- Chapter 10: The Use and Misuse of Legal History in The High Court Of Australia - Warren Swain.- Chapter 11: Did The Early British Colonists Regard the Indigenous Peoples of New South Wales as Subjects of the Crown Entitled to the Protection Of English Law? - Gavin Loughton.- Chapter 12: Land, the social imaginary and the Constitution Act 1867 (Qld) - Julie Copley.- Chapter 13: The good, the bad and the ugly: a short history of biosecurity regulation in australia - Noeleen McNamara.- Chapter 14: Legal Pluralism Past and Present: Magna Carta and a First Nations Voice In The Australian Constitution - Jason Taliadoros.