The ESCLH aims to promote comparative legal history and seeks affiliation with individuals and organisations with complementary aims.
More information: https://www.campus.de/buecher-campus-verlag/wissenschaft/geschichte/der_koerper_des_priesters-16535.html#
We learned of a call for
contributions to the 2022 issue of Rechtskultur.
Law and Reconstruction after
crisis will be the theme for the 2022 volume of Rechtskultur. The editors want
to focus on law as a tool for social engineering and how it has been applied to
reconstruct society after very different crises like the 30-years war, the
cholera pandemics or the fall of the Berlin Wall. The editors welcome
contributions from all relevant fields of science with a maximum length of 100
000 characters. Contributions should be submitted by using rechtskultur@ur.de
within 30. October 2022. All contributions will be peer reviewed, and
admittance for publications rests on the merits of the contribution alone. For
further information please visit our wegpage www.rechtskultur.org
Description:
The Academy Scholars Program identifies and supports outstanding scholars at the start of their careers whose work combines disciplinary excellence in the social sciences or law with a command of the language and history or culture of countries or regions outside of the United States or Canada. Their scholarship may elucidate domestic, comparative, or transnational issues, past or present. The Academy Scholars are a select community of individuals with resourcefulness, initiative, curiosity, and originality, whose work in cultures or regions outside of the US or Canada shows promise as a foundation for exceptional careers in major universities or international institutions. Academy Scholars are appointed for a two-year, in-residence, postdoctoral fellowship at The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. They receive substantial financial and research assistance to undertake sustained projects of research and/or acquire accessory training in their chosen fields and areas. The Senior Scholars, a distinguished group of senior Harvard University faculty members, act as mentors to the Academy Scholars to help them achieve their intellectual potential.
Read further here.
(source: ESILHIL Blog)
Description:
On July 2, NYU Law announced the establishment of the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project, whose goals include supporting the sovereignty of Native nations and addressing the impact of American colonialism on Native peoples. Professor of Law Maggie Blackhawk (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) and Ned Blackhawk (Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada), professor of history and American Studies at Yale University, will jointly run the multi-year project.
Read more here.
(source: ESILHIL Blog)
ABOUT THE BOOK
Collana: Le vie della civiltà
Un secolo fa i grandi imperi nell'Europa orientale crollarono. Gli stati che ne hanno preso il posto hanno cercato di emanciparsi dal passato ma l'eredità asburgica e ottomana è ancora in molti modi presente. Adottando una prospettiva post-imperiale, il volume riesce ad abbracciare in un'unica visione i Balcani del Novecento, visti come una grande regione caratterizzata da linee di continuità che l'attraversano pur entro il succedersi dei regimi. Confrontando a livello transnazionale gli sviluppi fondamentali in politica, società, economia e cultura, il volume mette in luce le differenze e le somiglianze sia dei singoli paesi, sia dell'intera regione nel più largo contesto europeo.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Oliver Jens Schmitt is a professor of South-East European history at the University of Vienna since 2005. He is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
The purpose of the theory of the state, which emerged in France under the Third Republic, is to provide a judicial definition of the state so that political relations may be resolved on the basis of legal relations. A priori a-historical, it has not stood the test of time so well. The judicialization of the state was practically inexistant before it was reinvented by scholars. From the Middle Ages, it was the sovereign incarnate (the king) or the sovereign desincarnate (the crown) that controlled sovereignty and the law. In 1789, it was the nation alone which embodied sovereignty, whereas rights partook of the foundation of politics. Because liberal constitutionalism does not take the state into consideration, the theorisation of the state cannot be a politically neutral operation.
Gregoire Bigot is professor of legal history at the Université de Nantes
More information: https://www.cairn.info/revue-pouvoirs-2021-2-page-5.htm
Santi Romano (1875-1947) was professor of administrative law at the University of Rome La Sapienza and president of the Italian Council of State.
More information: https://pos.direito.ufmg.br/rbep/index.php/rbep/article/view/886
Springer has published a new
book, in open access, in its Studies in the History of Law and Justice series.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This open access book presents a
comparative analysis of the use of fatherland terminology in a political and
legal context in Jülich, Hesse-Cassel and Brittany from 1642 to 1655.
Fatherland terminology includes words such as patria, patriot and nation. In
historiography, the use of these words by the nobility is often interpreted as
an early sign of nationalism that conflicted with the prince’s initiation of
state-building. The book argues that neither ‘states’ nor ‘nationalism’ truly
existed yet; rather, the political arena was dominated by dynasties. Further,
it rejects the notion of deliberate state-building and demonstrates that the
nobility used this terminology to object to princely politics as part of
adopting a “presupposed office.” This status allowed the nobility to place
itself outside the ruler-subject constellation and critique the situation. The
Duchy of Jülich and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel are used as examples of
small economies of scale with homogenous nobilities, and ones where the Thirty
Year’s War hit hard – which led to the illegal levying of taxes and the
billeting of soldiers, and in turn to the nobility critiquing princely
politics. In contrast, the Duchy of Brittany, with its large economy of scale
and heterogeneous nobility, found an alternative way of pursuing its interests
and keeping taxes as low as possible. The goal of this book is to discuss and
present three representative cases that offer insights into how the nobility
safeguarded the welfare and prosperity of the fatherland and its inhabitants.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Annemieke Romein obtained
her PhD at Erasmus University in 2016 on a comparative study of the political
terminology of the fatherland, patria and patriot in Hessen-Kassel, Gulik and
Bretagne. In 2017 she received an NWO Rubicon grant with which she worked in
Ghent from September 2017 to February 2020 on a project on
political-institutional/legal history, a comparison between the regions of
Flanders and Holland between 1576-1702. She was a Researcher-in-Residence/
project leader of the Digital Humanities “Entangled Histories” project at the
KB National Library of the Netherlands. Since 2020 she is working at Huygens
ING where she continues her research into early modern provincial regulations
with her NWO Veni project ‘A Game of Thrones?’.
More info here
We hope our readers can prudently enjoy the Summer for a 'Grand Tour' of open-air monuments and sparsely visited museums. The blogging team will be partly disconnected as well.
From tomorrow until Monday 16 August, there will only be light blogging. 'Light' does not equal a 'break'. This means that we will probably publish something every two to three days, instead of the usual rhythm. Messages sent to esclhblog@gmail.com will be consulted from 16 August on.
The daily mails sent out by google appear to continue (albeit at irregular and unpredictable hours), in spite of the previous notice we received of this service's termination.
Brill has published “Negotiations
of Gender and Property through Legal Regimes (14th-19th Century) - Stipulating,
Litigating, Mediating”.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This volume explores familial
wealth arrangements and gendered property from the fourteenth to the nineteenth
centuries in Italian, German and Austrian territories (including Florence,
Trento, Tyrol, and Vienna), Nordic countries, Western Pyrenees, and England.
Family property as capital in the form of houses, land, movables, financial
assets, and rights were of great importance in the past. Arrangements of such
property were characterised by a high degree of negotiating competence but
likewise they entailed competition between the parties involved and were highly
conflict prone. Fifteen contributors from Austria, Finland, France, Germany,
Italy, and the UK address different marital property regimes in relation to the
practices and legal regulations of inheritance patterns with consideration to
inter-familial negotiation, conflict, and resolution.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Margareth Lanzinger, Ph.D.
(1999), is Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of
Vienna. She has published monographs, edited volumes, and many articles on
kinship and property, including The Routledge History of the Domestic
Sphere (16th to 19th Century) (2020), co-edited with Joachim
Eibach.
Janine Maegraith, Ph.D. (2005), is Research Associate at the University
of Vienna. She has published widely on topics in social history of early modern
central Europe, including “Landlessness”. Reviewing the Early Modern Property
Structure in Southern Tyrol, in Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und
Agrarsoziologie 68, 1 (2020).
Siglinde Clementi, Ph.D. (2016), is Vice Director of the Competence
Centre for Regional History at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. She has
published widely on early modern Tyrol, gender and women’s history. Körper, Selbst und Melancholie. Die
Selbstzeugnisse des Landadeligen Osvaldo Ercole Trapp (1634–1710) (2017).
Ellinor Forster, Ph.D. (2008), is Assistant Professor at the
Institute for History and European Ethnology at the University of Innsbruck.
She has published widely on spatial concepts, political and symbolic
communication, legal and gender history, including Demarkationslinie Eherecht. Geschlechtsspezifische Nachwirkungen der
Rechtspluralität von Tiroler Landesordnung versus Trienter Statut und
österreichischem versus französischem Recht (1815–1856), in Vormärz.
Eine geteilte Geschichte Trentino-Tirols / Vormärz. Una Storia Condivisa
Trento-Tirolese (2017).
Christian Hagen, Ph.D. (2013), is Research Associate at the
University of Kiel. He published on Medieval economic, social, urban, regional,
and cultural history, including Fürstliche Herrschaft und kommunale
Teilhabe. Die Städte der Grafschaft Tirol im Spätmittelalter (2015).
More info here
Princeton University Press is having
its second annual summer sale:
What is summer, really, if not
the ideal time to grow your library? We are here to help make this possible.
From July 14–July 21, nearly every PUP book purchased through our website will
be discounted 50% when the code PUP21 is used at checkout. The offer is valid
worldwide and there is no limit on the number of books that can be ordered,
though some exclusions apply. Unsure where to get started? Looking for gift
ideas? During the sale, we will make available several thematic “shopping
guides” to aid in navigating some of our lists. Happy summer and happy summer
reading!
More info via Princeton University
Press
In this contribution, the authors introduce a few key aspects of Paolo Grossi’s research path and link them to their work on the legal questions raised by landed-commons and local ecologies.
Une autre façon de posséder. Réflexions historico/juridiques sur les aménagements fonciers en Italie (Paolo Grossi) (DOI 10.3917/riej.086.0055)
Abstract:
In his contribution Paolo Grossi provides his viewpoint as a legal historian on collective land set-ups in Italy and shows how, through constitutional jurisprudence and the adoption of Law n° 168 of 20 November 2017, the Italian legal order not only recognizes their legal autonomy but also recovers its pluralism and complexity. Such recognition benefits to the protection of the environmentr.
Read these and other articles on Cairn.
Read more here.
(source: Standen & Landen/Anciens Pays & Assemblées d'États)
Conference description:
In the last twenty years, the study of the history of international law and of international relations has witnessed something of a renaissance. The bicentenary of the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) also led to several new publications on the Congress System and on the “security culture” that was established in the aftermath of Napoleon. Nevertheless, many lacunae remain, especially regarding the relationship between law(s) and international relations during the long nineteenth century and in the sociocultural history of international law as a discipline with its own actors, networks, venues, institutions and power circles. The aim of the present conference is to deepen our study of the interconnections between law(s) and international relations through the eyes of a plurality of actors (e.g., legal advisers, lawyers, judges, activists, publicists, journalists, editors), institutions (e.g., foreign offices, courts, universities, academies of science, associations, libraries) and works on comparative law. Three focuses will be especially addressed by this conference. The first is the plurality of actors. We welcome proposals on legal advisers within governments, foreign offices and national or colonial administrations; on civil and administrative judges, admiralty courts and prize laws; and on lawyers, academics, peace activists, international thinkers, journalists and editors, including women as well as men. A prosopography of a group of actors is invited as well as individual biographies. The theme of the birth and professionalization of “international lawyers” will be studied as well as the various editors and the book market for international law. Our second focus will be on institutions. We especially invite papers studying the treatment of law(s) in foreign offices in a comparative perspective. For example, in Great Britain, legal issues were dealt by the Queens Lawyers until 1872 and afterwards by the Legal Adviser of the Foreign Office. In France after 1835, it was the Comité consultatif du contentieux that dealt with legal issues. But what about the foreign offices of other countries? Other institutions (similar to the Conseil d’état in France) may have also had their own “Foreign Office Committee.” How were these organized? Did they cooperate with the foreign office? What role was played by scientific academies in the diffusion of international law? By the universities? By popular libraries? Our third and final focus is on the study of comparative law and its link to the development of international law. The Société de législation comparée, founded in 1869, was full of members of the first generation of the Institut de Droit International, while many comparativists were, vice versa, members of the Institut de Droit International. Scientific journals such as the Revue historique de droit français et étranger and the Revue de droit international et de législation comparée dealt with both comparative and international law. Papers on the progressive autonomy of the discipline and on the networks of the founding members are especially welcome.
Convenors:
Dr Raphaël Cahen, LE STUDIUM / Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow FROM: Vrije Universiteit Brussel/CORE (VUB) - BE IN RESIDENCE AT: POuvoirs, LEttres, Normes (POLEN) / CNRS, University of Orléans - FR, Prof. Pierre Allorant, POuvoirs, LEttres, Normes (POLEN) / CNRS, University of Orléans - FR, Prof. Walter Badier, POuvoirs, LEttres, Normes (POLEN) / CNRS, University of Orléans - FR
See full program here.
(see call earlier on this blog)
(source: ESILHIL Blog)
Il volume ricostruisce il contributo offerto dai giuristi toscani – tra questi Lorenzo Collini, Giovanni Carmignani, Girolamo ed Enrico Poggi, Francesco Forti, Giuseppe Cosimo Vanni, Napoleone Pini, Vincenzo Salvagnoli, Celso Marzucchi, Ferdinando Andreucci, Giuseppe Panattoni – alla costruzione di un diritto per l’agricoltura nella Toscana dell’Ottocento, un’esperienza giuridica comprensibile nella ‘lunga durata’, percepita e sostenuta come «diversa» anche alle soglie dell’introduzione del codice civile italiano. Già nel 1808 l’Accademia dei Georgofili opponeva con successo la giurisprudenza patria e le liberalizzazioni dell’‘iconico’ Pietro Leopoldo al tentativo di Napoleone di introdurre un Project de code rural nella Toscana francese. Il codice rurale si sarebbe rivelato ‘impossibile’, con l’eccezione dei Principati di Lucca e Piombino,mai ricordati nel dibattito della Restaurazione; da allora l’Accademia dei Georgofili era un ponte tra la cultura giuridica ed istituzionale toscana, fino all’Unità terra di ius commune, e quella d’oltralpe. I ‘giuristi-economisti-politici’ credevano che la «potenza dello Stato» dipendesse dalla «cultura delle terre»; si impegnavano in Discorsi al pubblico – ai Georgofili, il Vieusseux, l’Accademia dei Nomofili – ed in ampie opere teorico-pratiche, coniugando diritto ed economia in vista di un «progresso per l’agricoltura» e dunque per la società, alla ricerca del legame «dati legali, dati sociali». Intendevano offrire un ‘sapere utile’ come contributo ‘civile’, tra proposte di «buone dottrine» e di un ‘pedagogico’ «codice rurale», per istruire i «campagnoli». Nell’ambito dei contratti agrari meritavano un’attenzione particolare i «livelli di Toscana», irriducibili alla dimensione contrattuale individuale, piuttosto «pubblica istituzione». Per questo profilo di identità di «toscana cittadinanza» si poneva il tema dell’aggiornare il celebrato sistema livellare leopoldino «al paragone dei tempi», verso un contrastato processo di affrancazione generale. Sul piano ‘costituzionale’ era chiara la percezione del legame tra proprietà fondiaria, «amministrazioni economiche», «poteri politici»; la «libertà della terra» era indicata come l’architrave del «diritto pubblico della nazione».
Floriana Colao: Dal 1999 è professore ordinario di Storia del diritto medievale e moderno, dal 2016-2017 anche di Storia delle codificazioni moderne nel Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza nell'Università degli Studi di Siena. È stata supplente di Storia del Diritto italiano presso la Facoltà di lettere e filosofia di Siena, con sede ad Arezzo, corso di laurea in Scienze dei beni archivistici e librari, e nel corso di laurea in Storia, sede in Siena.
This article reviews some of the main debates on methodology in legal history since the Second World War, engages in a dialogue with the social sciences and finally discusses the digital turn in law and legal history, focusing on network analysis.
Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 9.898, echoes ancient jurisprudence, not only because the divinity Saturnus is depicted as a jurist, but because the passage also refers to a jurisprudential rule on dowries. The text suggests that dotem dicere is possible after a marriage has been celebrated. Legal authorities (both imperial constitutions and works by jurists) show that Saturnus’ words are consistent with principles of Roman law on dowries.
Did the published Theodosian Code include obsolete constitutions? (Boudewijn Sirks) (DOI 10.1163/15718190-12340003)
Abstract:
It is a point of contention whether the Theodosian Code contains also obsolete constitutions as foreseen for the projected interim code of CTh 1,1,5, or only valid constitutions (with the exception of Book 16). The text of CTh 1,1,6 is unclear in this point and seems to be a mere continuation of the plan of CTh 1,1,5. However, it appears that the first view does not take into account other statements of Theodosius, and that research into particular subjects shows the compilers have rendered a logically consistent review of the law, without superfluous texts. In view of this evidence it is better to assume that also elsewhere in the Books 1 to 15 as a rule only valid laws were included.
This paper attempts to present, analyze and comment on the complex cases of suretyship described in the Peira, an anonymously-compiled casebook consisting of the judgments and verdicts of Eustathios Rhomaios, a judge whose activity spanned the last quarter of the tenth and the first decades of the eleventh century. We focus on legal matters that arise from the chapters in the Peira concerning suretyship with particular reference to their connection with the Basilica, the Greek collection of translations and summaries of Justinian’s codification, completed during the time of Leo the Wise around the year 900. An analysis of the cases discussed in this paper enables us to see and better understand how the Byzantines interpreted and applied law in the eleventh century.
The Historical Centre of Overijssel in Zwolle and the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels each conserve a fifteenth-century manuscript collection of legal and moral theological sources, written for the general chapter of the Augustinian canons regular of Windesheim. Both collections contain many ‘consilia’ by learned lawyers, several of whom were active in the prince-bishopric of Liège, at the universities of Paris or Cologne, or – especially – as professors of civil or canon law at the young university of Leuven. These manuscripts have already been the subject of a prosopographical analysis, but so far their content has not been studied. This article provides a substantive analysis of both collections. Topics include many disputes concerning the law of religious communities or regarding the congregation of Windesheim’s relationship to the diocesan bishops, the secular clergy and secular authorities. The volumes also cover diverse fields of the law of succession, contracts or delict.
Arguments related to slavery in seventeenth century Dutch legal theory (Gustaaf van Nifterik) (DOI 10.1163/15718190-12340005)
Abstract:
The Dutch participated fully in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The Dutch colonies, it was said, could not do without enslaved workers. But in the Dutch Provinces people were free; the Dutch were freedom loving Christian people. This articles sketches the legal arguments used by the seventeenth century Dutch jurists regarding slavery, and some slavery related topics as freedom and property. It appears that the pro-slavery arguments were so strong that a profound legal discussion among the jurists on the legitimacy of the institution was considered superfluous.
La faculté de tester dans le Dell’origine e dell’uffizio del notariato de Michele Cusa Une illustration de la culture juridique européenne d’un notaire piémontais au XIXe siècle (Anne Dobigny-Reverso) (DOI 10.1163/15718190-12340001)
Abstract:
In French law, the current reform plans affecting the reserved portion of inheritance that must devolve upon the heirs (‘legitim’) has revived the debate about the freedom of disposing of one’s estate by will. The debate echoes some of the considerations in Michele Cusa’s (1771-1855) work Dell’origine e dell’uffizio del notariato. The author, who was a notary, was a supporter of the testator’s freedom. His argument consists in a dialogue during which jurists, philosophers and politicians from all over Europe hold the stage. The dialogue reflects the broad culture of a Piemontese notary at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Cusa believed that the freedom to dispose of one’s estate by will was particularly important, because it was the only way to meet real-life social and economic demands, and the complex relationships formed within a family. The testator’s freedom should nonetheless be regulated by statute, so that its excessive use by a father or husband can be restricted.
Foreign law without borders in the early vast America Spanish legal literature in 18th century North America (Angela Ballone) (DOI 10.1163/15718190-12340007)
Abstract:
This work addresses the circulation of legal literature from the Hispanic world into the British Atlantic during the 18th century and within the broader context of the Americas. It wants to break free from the dichotomy between British and Hispanic Atlantic by looking at the early Americas as a space where legal literature moved across borders. The case study analyzed in this work is that of the 17th century Spanish jurist Juan de Solórzano Pereira and its circulation in the British Atlantic. By analyzing the writings of a number of legal practitioners from the British Atlantic (such as James Otis, James Abercromby, and Adam Smith), I discuss the extent to which their knowledge of Solórzano’s work showed a transnational approach when discussing the relationship between the thirteen American colonies and their British mother-country. This study calls scholars’ attention to a number of networks of circulation for legal literature that possibly had more influence than has usually been acknowledged on the legal history of the United States of America. Ultimately, the article shows that much is left to discover about the practical, generative, aspects of legal history in an early modern scenario where Europe and the Americas need to be seen in more nuanced and balanced ways.
Review essay: ‘Constitutional lawyers are Dutchmen’ (Alain Wijffels) (DOI 10.1163/15718190-12340006)
Abstract:
V. Bogdanor’s Beyond Brexit (2019) is a constitutional lawyer’s argument in favour of a codified constitution for the United Kingdom. During the UK’s temporary membership of the European Communities and European Union (1973-2020), main features of the constitution which still prevailed in the 1960s have changed. The author discusses parliamentary sovereignty, referendums, collective government responsibility, human rights, and devolution.
Book reviews:
Description:
Cette rubrique thématique propose une sélection d'ouvrages disponibles dans Gallica sur la situation juridique des femmes dans différents domaines du droit. Elle sera progressivement enrichie. Les textes sélectionnés sont répartis en plusieurs catégories : ouvrages généraux sur la situation juridique des femmes, par branches du droit (droit romain, droit civil, droit commercial, droit du travail, protection sociale, droits politiques), sur des sujets plus précis (nationalité, droit à l'éducation, femmes avocates) ou plus spécifiques (droit et féminisme). Devant être libres de droits, les ouvrages sélectionnés ne peuvent pas rendre compte de l’avancée majeure des droits des femmes tout au long du XXe siècle, en particulier après la seconde guerre mondiale. Ils peuvent néanmoins témoigner de la situation juridique des femmes en France au cours du XIXe siècle et des débuts de son évolution.
Read more here.
First paragraph:
Perhaps it is not an inappropriate idea to have a profile of the late pioneer of global international legal history and emeritus editor of this journal, Michael Stolleis, begin in a Munich attic room. So let’s travel back a few decades, to Munich in the late 1960s, where Stolleis, a doctoral student and later post-doctoral lecturer, received crucial inspiration for his style of thinking.
Read further on the journal's website: DOI 10.1163/15718050-12340188.
A German version is avilable here: DOI 10.1163/15718050-12340190
(source: ESILHIL Blog)
Introduction: Sexuality, Holocaust, Stigma (Anna Hájková)
Understanding Sexual Violence during the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research and Sources (Regina Mühlhäuser)
Shared Intimacies: Women’s Sexuality in Foreign Workers’ Camps, 1940–1945 (Camille Fauroux)
Cross-dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography (Jennifer Evans, Elissa Mailänder)
Sexual Violence against Men and Boys during the Holocaust: A Genealogy of (Not-So-Silent) Silence (Dorota Glowacka)
Sexual Barter and Jewish Women’s Efforts to Save their Lives: Accounts from the Righteous Among the Nations Archives (Katya Gusarov)
Between Love and Coercion: Queer Desire, Sexual Barter and the Holocaust (Anna Hájková)
Book reviews:
On the book:
How the imposition of Crown rule across the British Empire during the Age of Revolution corroded the rights of British subjects and laid the foundations of the modern police state. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British Empire responded to numerous crises in its colonies, from North America to Jamaica, Bengal to New South Wales. This was the Age of Revolution, and the Crown, through colonial governors, tested an array of coercive peacekeeping methods in a desperate effort to maintain control. In the process these leaders transformed what it meant to be a British subject. In the decades after the American Revolution, colonial legal regimes were transformed as the king’s representatives ruled new colonies with an increasingly heavy hand. These new autocratic regimes blurred the lines between the rule of law and the rule of the sword. Safeguards of liberty and justice, developed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, were eroded while exacting obedience and imposing order became the focus of colonial governance. In the process, many constitutional principles of empire were subordinated to a single, overarching rule: where necessary, colonial law could diverge from metropolitan law. Within decades of the American Revolution, Lisa Ford shows, the rights claimed by American rebels became unthinkable in the British Empire. Some colonial subjects fought back but, in the empire, the real winner of the American Revolution was the king. In tracing the dramatic growth of colonial executive power and the increasing deployment of arbitrary policing and military violence to maintain order, The King’s Peace provides important lessons on the relationship between peacekeeping, sovereignty, and political subjectivity—lessons that illuminate contemporary debates over the imbalance between liberty and security.
On the author:
Lisa Ford is the author of the prizewinning Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836 and coauthor of Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850. She is Professor of History at the University of New South Wales.
CUP is publishing a new book on
the use and reading of the Bible and the Constitution during the slavery crisis
before the Civil War.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the decades before the Civil
War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the
Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing
political debates over slavery deepened interpreters' emphasis on historical readings
of the sacred texts, and in turn, these readings began to highlight the
unbridgeable historical distances that separated nineteenth-century Americans
from biblical and founding pasts. While many Americans continued to adhere to a
belief in the Bible's timeless teachings and the Constitution's enduring
principles, some antislavery readers, including Theodore Parker, Frederick
Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, used historical distance to reinterpret and use
the sacred texts as antislavery documents. By using the debate over American
slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins traces the development of American
historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how a growing emphasis
on historical readings of the Bible and the Constitution gave rise to a sense
of historical distance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jordan T. Watkins, Brigham Young
University, Utah
Jordan T. Watkins is an assistant
professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University.
Previously, he was a coeditor at The Joseph Smith Papers Project.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Introduction
1. 'Recourse must be had to the history of those times'
2. 'The ground will shake'
3. 'Texts … designed for local and temporary use'
4. 'The further we recede from the birth of the constitution'
5. 'The culture of cotton has healed its deadly wound'
6. 'Times now are not as they were'
7. 'We have to do not … with the past, but the living present'
8. A 'Modern crispus attucks'
Conclusion
Epilogue
Index.
More info here
Book abstract:
How was power justified in late medieval Europe? What justifications did people find convincing, and why? Based around the two key intellectual movements of the fifteenth century, conciliarism in the church and humanism, this study explores the justifications for the distribution of power and authority in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Europe. By examining the arguments that convinced people in this period, Joseph Canning demonstrates that it was almost universally assumed that power had to be justified but that there were fundamentally different kinds of justification employed. Against the background of juristic thought, Canning presents a new interpretative approach to the justifications of power through the lenses of conciliarism, humanism and law, throwing fresh light on our understanding of both conciliarists' ideas and the contribution of Italian Renaissance humanists.
On the author:
Joseph Canning is Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is the author of The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (1987), A History of Medieval Political Thought, c.300-c.1450 (1996) and Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296-1417 (2011).
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Our Society's journal Comparative Legal History (Taylor & Francis) published its first issue of 2021. Please note that members of our Society are entitled to receive a free hard copy.
Editorial (Agustín Parise & Matthew Dyson)
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2021.1908929
Immemorial (and native) customs in early modernity: Europe and the Americas (Tamar Herzog)
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2021.1908930
Abstract:
This text asks how a greater familiarity with European law would change our vision of colonial territories, most particularly, Latin America. Concentrating on the study of immemorial and native customs in both European and American territories, it argues that these customs were not necessarily ancient or authentic. Instead, they authorised making legal exceptions to the general rule in a legal universe that was dramatically different from our own. They sustained the existence and legitimacy of a local juridical sphere while also maintaining the importance of a common, cross-Christian, legal understanding. By showcasing what practitioners, jurists, theologians, and scholars have said about customs during the early modern period and since, the aim is not to criticise what had been done by others but to offer a useful framework that would allow us to meaningfully merge the multiplicity of voices historians have already recovered, as well as supply those who work on these issues with the necessary background.
Can a judge rely on his private knowledge? Early modern Lutherans and Catholics compared (Paolo Astorri)
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2021.1908935
Abstract:
This article examines the opinions of Catholic and Lutheran authors on the question of whether a judge should decide a case according to his personal knowledge when that knowledge conflicts with the charges and evidence at the trial. The majority of the Catholics contended that the judge had to follow the evidence. They distinguished between the judge as a public functionary and as a private man. The judge could not use in a trial what he knew as a man. There were certain Lutherans whose opinions remained close to this position. However, a significant number argued that the distinction between the judge as a functionary and as a man lacked foundation. Divine law commanded the judge to avoid lies and not to kill an innocent. If the judge knew that someone was innocent and nonetheless condemned him by following the evidence at the trial, he committed a sin. To avoid giving an unjust sentence, the judge had to use the knowledge he had obtained privately.
Caught between nostalgia and modernisation: The history of criminal justice and punishments in Japan (Kiran Chaudhuri)
Abstract:
Building upon the literature review of crimes and punishments in Japan from the Middle Ages to modern times, this paper highlights the contradictory forces driving the evolution of criminal law and criminal justice. Individual versus State, human rights versus government powers – these are some of the struggles Japanese rulers and legal thinkers have been facing. After an initial period of isolation during the Tokugawa Era, the country's criminal justice system, although it embraced a comparative approach, has nevertheless developed by constantly switching between nostalgia for traditional values and demand for the acknowledgement of universal rights. By tracing the fragmented process that led to a modern criminal justice system, the present research shows the effect of legal transplants on national criminal policies and, in particular, on the struggle between the conservatives, who claim wider government powers in the name of traditional values, and the progressivists, who warn against the threat of human rights violations.
Book reviews:
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Series: Brill's Companions to the Byzantine World, Volume: 8
This book offers a collection of essays on Byzantine Italy, the area from which we have inherited the richest and best-preserved historical evidence among all of the regions of the former Eastern Roman Empire up to the 11th century. The collection aims to provide readers with a critical overview of current research as well as new insights concerning political, institutional, economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects of the Italian regions under Byzantine rule. The methodological approach of the volume combines history with archaeology and art history, while remaining focused on the general framework of the early medieval Mediterranean. The result is a fresh and up-to-date synthesis that can be useful both for specialists and students.
Contributors are: Lucia Arcifa, Paul Arthur, Isabella Baldini, Massimo Bernabò, Brunella Bruno, Salvatore Cosentino, Nathaniel Cutajar, Francesco D’Aiuto, Paola Degni, Deborah Deliyannis, Vera von Falkenhausen, Sauro Gelichi, Federico Marazzi, Jean-Marie Martin, Alessandra Molinari, Enrico Morini, Annliese Nef, Ghislaine Noye, Annick Peters-Custot, Vivien Prigent, Mario Re, Denis Sami, Pier Giorgio Spanu, and Enrico Zanini.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Salvatore Cosentino, Ph.D. (1990), is Professor of Byzantine Civilization at the University of Bologna. He has published many studies on Late Antique and Byzantine Italy, including Storia dell’Italia bizantina (VI-XI). Da Giustiniano ai Normanni (Bononia University Press, 2008) and, as editor, Ravenna and the Traditions of Late Antique and Early Byzantine Craftsmanship (De Gruyter, 2020).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Mapping the Memory of Byzantine Italy
Salvatore Cosentino and Enrico Zanini
Part 1: Society and Institutions
1 Politics and Society
Salvatore Cosentino
2 Ecclesiastic Life and Its Institutions
Salvatore Cosentino
3 Monastic Life and Its Institutions
Enrico Morini
4 Byzantine Administration and the Army
Vivien Prigent
5 Byzantines and Lombards The Old and the Young: Byzantium in Italy, or How It Was Condemned to Be the Representative of an Antiquated Roman Identity
Federico Marazzi
6 Byzantium and Islam in Southern Italy (7th–11th Century)
Annliese Nef
7 Greek Communities in Post-Byzantine Italy
Annick Peters-Custot
Part 2: Communications, Economy and Landscape
8 The Network of Interregional Roads and Harbours
Denis Sami
9 Rural Economy: Organization, Exploitation and Resources
Jean-Marie Martin
10 Non-Agricultural Items: Local Production, Importation and Redistribution
Enrico Zanini
11 Mints, Coin Production and Circulation
Vivien Prigent
Part 3: Settlements and Landscape: Regional Morphologies
12 Venice, the Exarchate and the Pentapolis
Sauro Gelichi
13 Rome and the Roman Duchy
Alessandra Molinari
14 Byzantine Naples and Gaeta
Federico Marazzi
15 Byzantine Calabria
Ghislaine Noyé
16 Byzantine Apulia
Paul Arthur
17 Byzantine Sicily
Lucia Arcifa
18 Byzantine Sardinia
Pier Giorgio Spanu
19 Byzantine Malta
Brunella Bruno and Nathaniel Cutajar
Culture and Education
20 Greek and Latin in Byzantine Italy (6th–11th Century)
Vera von Falkenhausen
21 Bishops, Cities, and Historical Memory in Byzantine Italy
Deborah M. Deliyannis
22 Telling the Sanctity in Byzantine Italy
Mario Re
23 Devotion and Prayer in Byzantine Italy
Francesco D’Aiuto
24 Medieval Art in Italy and Byzantium (ca. 550–1050): A Viaticum
Massimo Bernabò
25 Conceiving Social Space in Byzantine Italy: Monumental Architecture and Building Typologies
Isabella Baldini
26 Literary and Book Production in Byzantine Italy
Paola Degni
27 Legal Texts and Juridical Practice in Byzantine Italy
Cristina Rognoni
Index
More information with the publisher.
