Include bibliographical reference and index

I. MAKING HABEAS CORPUS
1 The Jailer Jailed: 1605 and Beyond
2 Writing Habeas Corpus
3 Writ of the Prerogative
II. USING HABEAS CORPUS
4 Making Judgments
5 Making Jurisdiction
6Making Liberties, Making Subjects
III. HABEAS CORPUS, BOUND AND UNBOUND
7 Legislators as Judges
8 Writ Imperial
9 The Palladium of Liberty in Law's Empire
Appendix: A Survey of Habeas Corpus Use, 1500-1800
Notes
Manuscript Sources
Table of Cases
Table of Statutes
Index

We call habeas corpus the Great Writ of Liberty. But it was actually a writ of power. In a work based on an unprecedented study of thousands of cases across more than five hundred years, Paul Halliday provides a sweeping revisionist account of the world's most revered legal device.
In the decades around 1600, English judges used ideas about royal power to empower themselves to protect the king's subjects. The key was not the prisoner's "right" to "liberty"—these are modern idioms—but the possible wrongs committed by a jailer or anyone who ordered a prisoner detained. And the need to control imperial subjects would increasingly constrain judges. ---provided by publisher