Obsolete common-law doctrines lingered for centuries rather than being abolished openly.

Evidence

Older English law was often as devious in making changes as it was (sometimes) slow. The culture of the older common law was very shy about openly abolishing obsolete doctrines and institutions. English law preferred to supersede and ignore them. Trial by battle, that hoary medieval favorite of romance and costume movies, was not officially done away with in England until 1819. For centuries, it slept in its sarcophagus; then a chance mistake in court, in 1818, reminded the legal profession that trial by battle was still a legal possibility. An embarrassed Parliament quickly buried the corpse (59 Geo. III, c. 46, 1819). — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 92

Categorization

• CANDY: Trial by battle legally sleeping until 1818 is a genuinely fun courtroom anecdote.
• XREF: connects to: Common law survived because abandoning it was practically impossible — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 584; Courts share an obligation to modernize outdated common-law rules — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2367; Outdated institutional partitions persist by tradition long after their logic expires — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1992 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Abolishing this right took eight hundred years of gradual change #exemplifies (0.80) — , The Rod and the Child, 1391
• Common law survived because abandoning it was practically impossible #expands (0.78) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 584
• Outdated institutional partitions persist by tradition long after their logic expires #qualifies (0.75) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1992
• Courts share an obligation to modernize outdated common-law rules #responds-to (0.72) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 2367
• Law changes by layered accretion rather than revolutionary overhaul. #expands (0.72) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 75
• Orientalists abandoned the term yet continued using it in practice #exemplifies (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 523
• History is discontinuous hegemonic succession, not teleological advance. #corroborates (0.72) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 446