Article on Interpretation of the Magna Carta & Widow’s Quarantine

Janet Loengard recently published an Article entitled, Interpretation and Re-Interpretation of a Clause: Magna Carta and the Widow’s Quarantine, 25 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 403 (2016). Provided below is an abstract of the Article:

Looking in pre-modern English legal records for examples of the widow’s quarantine and the writ de quarantina habenda that protected it is a little like looking for the abominable snowman; many people swear it exists, although no one has seen it for certain. But in the case of the elusive action, there are just enough sightings to enable one to say positively that it was there. Over the centuries, quarantine did leave a trail. This Paper follows it on two sides of an ocean, because quarantine provides a rather good example of how a provision of Magna Carta was understood or interpreted by courts–and societies–with differing attitudes to land, heirs, and women.