In 1884, the University of Berne celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with ceremonies spanning three days, attended by delegates from the international diplomatic corps and many of the universities of Western Europe. As part of the ceremonies, the university awarded honorary doctorates in theology, philosophy, medicine, and law. Along with a number of Swiss and German scholars, one American was honored: Joel Prentiss Bishop. He was, the university thought, among those “who by their learning and their works rendered great service to their land and to the science of the law.”

The train Mary Jane Chilton had boarded, typical of trains of the period, had two passenger coaches: a ladies' car and a smoker. Only women and women accompanied by gentlemen rode in the ladies' car, while in the smoker rode all manner of men traveling alone, some of whom were smoking and drinking. In the oncoming darkness, Mary Jane Chilton feared the smoker and the men there who were strangers to her. Yet as she tried to enter the ladies' car, the brakeman blocked her way; the conductor seconded his actions: “that car was not for niggers.” Rather than go into the smoker, Mary Jane Chilton sat down on the steps of the ladies' car until the conductor, as she describes, bodily moved her to the train platform in front of a crowd of cheering bystanders, and the train pulled out of the station. Mary Jane Chilton, her fifteen-year-old daughter, and her eight-year-old nephew were left to walk to Carondelet, Missouri.

Over the course of the late winter and spring of 1933, the German Bar Association (DAV), along with most other institutions in Germany, submitted to “coordination” by the new National Socialist regime. Coordination in reality meant a takeover of the private legal profession by younger lawyers who were National Socialist activists, directed from Berlin. The traditional leadership of the German bar permitted itself to be replaced by newcomers, formerly far removed from the centers of power in professional institutions. Regional lawyers' chambers, despite minor delays and efforts to express solidarity with colleagues in leadership now defined as falling outside of the “racial community,” also succumbed. Within five months, a profession that nineteenth-century reformers had condidered a bulwark of civil soviety, and which had viewed itself as a rock of independence from both state and public, had bowed to the demands of a party whose leader viewed lawyers with contempt and valued race over right.

When Henry II (1154–1189) ascended the English throne, centralization of administration became a key theme of his government and judicial reform a key theme of centralization. Throughout his reign, Henry enlarged royal jurisdiction over pleas of land by providing, by means of royal writs, jury trial before the king's justices as an alternative to judgment in the seignorial courts. The assize of novel disseisin (1155 x 1166) led the way for the assizes utrum (1164), mort d'ancestor (1176), and darrein presentment (post 1179), and for the Grand Assize (c. 1179) and writs of dower. Henry also centralized and tightened royal jurisdiction over criminal pleas through the Assize of Clarendon (1166) and reform of the appeal of felony.