With a new foreword by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus (author of Witness for the Defense, Eyewitness Testimony, and The Myth of Repressed Memory) the impact of this work continues to be felt a century after its initial publication. Topics in the book include: the memory of the witness, the detection of crime, untrue confessions, suggestions in court, hypnotism and crime, illusions, and the prevention of crime.

    W. Maitland's remarkable course of lectures provides the basic framework of English constitutional history in a brief, but original, scholarly and very readable form. His method is to take five crucial periods and to present in each a panoramic view of the processes of law and government; his attention is always fixed on the constitution as a growing fabric, as something devised and employed by live human beings. And in this work, as in all he subsequently wrote, Maitland shows a rare combination of high speculative power with exact knowledge of detail.