Essay: Must you know the history of English law to understand it?

The argument about the necessity of knowing history for understanding English Law has been raised for a long time because of the long history of English Law.
Law is not just based on ethical or political analysis and human nature but it is also about history. English Law has been evolving over the past centuries. Therefore, illustrating the reasons why the knowledge of English legal history is crucial for understanding English law is the main purpose of this essay.
One who wants to understand English Law must have the concept of the powers and structure of the English legal system and has to recognise the brief legal history of the UK.
Take the UK parliament as an example, it is the supreme legal authority in the UK which is, technically, able to produce and erase any law in the state because of its parliamentary sovereignty. However, politically, its parliamentary sovereignty could be limited by other authorities and factors, for instance, the EU, which the UK has joined it since 1973, and the Scottish Parliament, which is established in 1999.
For example, there still are 28 member states (including the UK) in the EU, lots of policies and rules are discussed by different member states. Therefore, even UK parliament want to stop something to be launched in the UK, it is not easy for them to do it because the decision was made together by many other member states of the EU. In addition, a certain percentage of English Law comes from EU legislation. For people who do not know about the relationship part of history between the EU and the UK might not be able to understand the legal matters between the member states and the UK and some legal matters in the UK, such as the business law and immigration law in the UK.
Also, what we are doing at the moment will become history in the future. Take UK Parliament as an example again, it cannot stop ‘Brexit’ because it is decided by us, the people in the UK, through a referendum. Thus, after leaving the EU, some parts of the English Law might change and the say of the UK on some legal matters in Europe might be affected by ‘Brexit’. People in the future who do not really know anything about the history of ‘Brexit’ might find it difficult to understand the sudden changes in this period while studying Law.
Apart from the above, history of English Law is very important for us to understand the development in law in order to understand English Law. There are many cases in the past that we must know.
Contract law is an example that we need to know more things happened in the past to understand the law. Take offer and sales puff as example, we need to study some cases in the past in order to understand the difference between them. Carlill is a famous cases which depicts the difference. It shows that a statement referring to a certain amount of money demonstrates intention, so it is not a mere sales puff.
There is also an example in criminal law. R v G and R is a famous case happened in the past which helps people to understand why the courts do not just use the Caldwell test to check if a person is responsible to a crime.
The above shows that we need to at least know something happened in the past to understand the way English law works.
Some say that we could just recite the uses of law and statues to study law. It is true that we could remember some contents of English Law and may know how to use the laws by reciting things. However, it is impossible for people to understand the development and changes in English Law just by looking at the present situation because of its long history.
Natural law and positivism are key concepts in jurisprudence which are related to history. Natural law first appeared in ancient Greek. People believed that natural law applies to everyone and it was the basis of a democratic society. People should be given the natural rights to live their lives. In 19th century, positivism started opposing natural law. It is difficult for people to understand jurisprudence without knowing natural law and positivism. To understand them requires some knowledge of history.
To conclude, knowledge of history is required for understanding the structure, the development and changes, and jurisprudence concepts of the English legal system. These things are really important for people to understand English Law. Therefore, it is impossible to understand English law without knowing something of its history.