Craig Newbery-Jones, LLB (Hons) Exon, LLM (Lancaster)
Telephone: 07983768200
My name is Craig Newbery-Jones and I am the current recipient of the Clifford Parker Memorial Scholarship.
I am originally from Ammanford, Carmarthenshire in South Wales where I attended Amman Valley School for my secondary education and A-levels. I studied my undergraduate degree here at the University of Exeter obtaining a 2:1 with Honours degree. I then studied for an LLM by Research in Lancaster University under the supervision of Professor David Sugarman. On completion of my masters thesis, I returned to Exeter to join the newly-founded Centre for Legal History Research under the careful supervision of Professor Chantal Stebbings. It is both a great pleasure and an immense honour to be back at the University of Exeter.
My current research is therefore an amalgamation of my undergraduate studies in law and legal history and my master’s research into the representation of the legal profession in popular culture. This perspective is novel and means that my research will shed new light on the public image of lawyers and their depiction in Victorian culture. The amalgamation of these subjects is highlighted in my thesis title.
My thesis title is "The Power of the Press in the Regulation of the Bar in Nineteenth Century England".
In the first half of the nineteenth century, central government began, albeit with a reluctant acceptance, to intervene into the private affairs of individuals and institutions. Their intention was improvement and modernisation through centralised intervention. This state intervention was required in response to the considerable changes to societal structure during the extensive industrialisation and urbanisation of the nineteenth century. The bars internalised and historically founded system of regulation through the Inns of Court and Circuit Messes was naturally at odds with this ideological shift from localised and internalised control to interventionist, centralised regulation. The press was a major driving force behind such intervention through its exposure of social and economic problems inherent nineteenth century society.
My research seeks to explore the symbiotic relationship between the bar, the press and the public in relation to bars prevention of state intervention into their regulatory affairs. I will explore how the press represented the bar to the public through the bars general exposure of the profession as well as their reporting of the bars regulatory activities. My research will address the extent to which the press contributed to the level of state intervention and centralised control into the regulatory affairs of the bar in the nineteenth century.
