This introduction places the articles featured in this special issue of the Journal of British Studies within the context of recent scholarship on late medieval and early modern women and the law. It is designed to highlight the many boundaries that structured women's legal agency in Britain, including the procedural boundaries that filtered their voices through male advisers and officials, the jurisdictional boundaries that shaped litigation strategies, the constraints surrounding women's appearance as witnesses in court, the gendered differentiation of rights determined by primogeniture and marital property law, and the boundaries between legal and extralegal activity. Emphasizing the importance of a nuanced approach, it rejects the construction of women's litigation simply as a form of resistance to patriarchal norms and also urges caution against overestimating or oversimplifying the choices available to women in legal disputes or their latitude to operate as autonomous individuals. Gender intersected in British courts with locality, resources, jurisdiction, social status, and familial, religious, and political affiliations to inform different women's access to justice, which involved negotiations between unequal actors within various constraints and in complex alignment with multiple and often competing interests.

中文翻译：

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1300-1700 年英国妇女在正义的边界上进行谈判：简介

本简介将本期特刊中的文章英国研究杂志在最近关于中世纪晚期和早期现代女性和法律的学术背景下。它旨在突出构成英国女性法律机构的许多界限，包括通过男性顾问和官员过滤她们的声音的程序界限、塑造诉讼策略的管辖界限、围绕女性作为证人出庭的限制、性别长子继承和婚姻财产法所确定的权利区分，以及法律和法外活动之间的界限。强调细致入微的方法的重要性，它拒绝构建女性的 的诉讼仅仅是作为对父权规范的一种抵抗形式，并且还敦促不要高估或过度简化妇女在法律纠纷中的选择或她们作为自治个体的自由度。性别在英国法院与地点、资源、管辖权、社会地位以及家庭、宗教和政治派别相交叉，以告知不同妇女诉诸司法的机会，这涉及在各种限制条件下不平等的行为者之间的谈判，并与多重且经常相互竞争的利益复杂地对齐.