The ESCLH aims to promote comparative legal history and seeks affiliation with individuals and organisations with complementary aims.
90 Years – The 1922 Irish Free State
A graduate of the University
of Edinburgh, Professor Cairns was
Lecturer in Jurisprudence at Queen's University Belfast before returning to Edinburgh to hold the
posts of lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and eventually the Chair of Legal
History in 2000. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Miami
(1988, 1991, 1995) and Southern Methodist University (1986). He held the office
of Associate Dean (Postgraduate)/Director of the Graduate School
in Law from 2000-2003. From 1996-2003 Professor Cairns was Book Review Editor of the Edinburgh
Law Review and he has served on the editorial boards and committees of a
number of legal history periodicals. He was consultant on Scots Law to the
Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, and since 1998 has been Chairman of
the Council of the Stair Society. From 2006 to 2008 Professor Cairns was
president of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society; he continues on
its Board. In 2008, he became a founding member of the Advisory Board of
the Alan Watson Foundation. He is a member of the Peer Review
College of the AHRC. His current major research interests are legal
theory and legal education in the Scottish Enlightenment; slavery and law in
eighteenth-century Scotland;
and the legal histories of Scotland
and Louisiana,
publishing extensively in all. He has recently been involved in a
research network that drafted guidelines on the interpretation of slavery in
international law.This Article looks at a historical problem—the first use of case law by English royal justices in the thirteenth century—and makes it a starting point for thinking about the ways legal reasoning works in the modern common law. In the first Part of the Article, I show that, at its origin, the English justices’ use of decided cases as a source of law was inspired by the work civil and canon law scholars were doing with written authorities in the medieval universities. In an attempt to make the case that English law was on par with civil law and canon law, the justices and clerks of the royal courts began to treat cases as if they were the opinions of great jurists, to apply the same types of dialectical reasoning that were used in civil law discourse to those cases, and to work them into systems of authority. They used cases, as the modern common law does; but they used cases to create systems of the kind we usually associate with civil law. In the second Part of the Article, I turn to the modern common law and, using the methods of medieval case law as a mirror, show that the differences between civil law and common law reasoning are more perceived than real. American lawyers tend to view common law as flexible and creative, whereas they view civil law as ossified and hierarchical. This largely stems from the fact that common lawyers focus on the judicial opinion as the place where legal reasoning takes place. By integrating other texts, like the student outline and the restatement—which seek to create a harmonious system out of judicial opinions—into the picture of common law reasoning, I show that common law reasoning shares quite a bit in common with civil law reasoning.
The second issue of "Historia et ius" has been published at the web address www.historiaetius.eu
Porticvm, a
digital journal of medieval studies appearing half-yearly, aims to provide a
platform for the work of young researchers in medieval art and history (http://www.porticvm.com/). 
James Q. Whitman, The verdict of battle : the law of victory and the making of modern war, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2012. 
What: Seminar on "Famille, normes et pouvoir dans la modernité politique"
What: Conference "Formes et doctrines de l’État. Dialogue entre histoire du droit et théorie du droit"
The Mario Sbriccoli Prize, established by the University of Macerata thanks to the financial support of Mrs Annabianca Sbriccoli, aims at remembering the work of the scholar who has brought great prestige to the University of Macerata. 
What: Conference of the Società Italiana di Storia del Diritto "Diritto e controllo sociale. Persone e status nelle prassi giuridiche"
What: Conference "L'exclusion dans les sociétés du haut Moyen Âge"
What: Conference:
Inheritance, patrimonial rights and blended
families: confronting past and present / 