(Source: Harvard University Press)
Harvard University Press has published a
new book on the general history of European legal systems.
Summary:
To many observers, European law seems like
the endpoint of a mostly random walk through history. Certainly the trajectory
of legal systems in the West over the past 2,500 years is far from
self-evident. In A Short History of European Law, Tamar Herzog offers a new
road map that reveals underlying patterns and unexpected connections. By
identifying what European law was, where its iterations could be found, who was
allowed to make and implement it, and what the results were, she ties legal
norms to their historical circumstances, and allows readers to grasp their malleability
and fragility.
Herzog describes how successive European
legal systems built upon one another, from ancient times through the
establishment and growth of the European Union. Roman law formed the backbone
of each configuration, though the way it was understood, used, and reshaped
varied dramatically from one century and place to the next. Only by considering
Continental civil law and English common law together do we see how they drew
from and enriched this shared tradition.
Expanding the definition of Europe to
include its colonial domains, Herzog explains that British and Spanish empires
in the New World were not only recipients of European legal traditions but also
incubators of new ideas. Their experiences, as well as the constant tension
between overreaching ideas and naive localism, explain how European law
refashioned itself as the epitome of reason and as a system with potentially
global applications.
About
the author:
Tamar Herzog is Monroe Gutman Professor of
Latin American Affairs and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor in the History
Department at Harvard University, and Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law
School.
Table
of Contents:
Introduction: The Making of Law in Europe
Part One: Ancient Times
1. Roman Law: Now You See It, Now You Don’t
2. The Creation of Latin Christendom
Part Two: The Early Middle Ages
3. An Age with No Jurists?
4. Lords, Emperors, and Popes around the
Year 1000
Part Three: The Later Middle Ages
5. The Birth of a European Ius Commune
6. The Birth of an English Common Law
Part Four: The Early Modern Period
7. Crisis and Reaffirmation of Ius Commune
8. Crisis and Reinvention of Common Law
9. From Ius Gentium to Natural Law: Making
European Law Universal I
Part Five: Modernity
10. North American Developments
11. The French Revolution
Part Six: The Nineteenth Century
12. Codifying the Laws of Europe: Making
European Law Universal II
13. Codifying Common Law
Epilogue: A Market, a Community, and a
Union
Notes
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
More information to be found on the site
of the publisher
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