A whole chapter in The Betwitching of Anne Gunter is dedicated to contemporary law, which I found particularly fascinating because not only how much it resonates with how our legal institutions work now, but also how the two contrast in so many ways.  For instance, lawyers, a traditional element of trials, were “largely absent from criminal trials” (120) of the time.  Also very different from today are how trials back then often involved a “direct confrontation between the accuser and the accused” (121); and how often the judge – rather than act as a neutral arbiter as expected today – would actually interpose in the trial himself, his input being “as important in the trial of witchcraft as it was with any other offense” (122).