BOOK TALK ANNOUNCEMENT: Ada Kuskowski, Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France - 20 January 2023, 12:30--2 pm (on Zoom)

 

Where does law come from? In the Middle Ages, there were generally two answers: legislation and custom. Later history would see custom largely pushed out of the realm of the legal, notably because of the advent of the legislative state and philosophies of legal positivism (with some exceptions). During the Middle Ages, however, legislation was piecemeal and record-keeping nascent. Large swathes of legal life were governed not by fiat but by custom. 

What custom meant, however, went through a radical shift during the period. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, custom went from being a largely oral and performed practice to one that was also conceptualized in writing. Based on French lawbooks known as coutumiers, Ada Kuskowski traces the repercussions of this transformation – in the form of custom from unwritten to written and in the language of law from elite Latin to common vernacular – on the cultural world of law. Vernacular Law offers a fresh understanding of the formation of customary law as a new field of knowledge. Instead of a fossilized and somewhat inaccurate presentation of legal practice, this book shows authors combining ideas, experience and critical thought in order to transform disparate individual customs and practices into a new medium that presented them as a cohesive 'customary law.' Medieval customary law, commonly seen a community norm repeated by rote, emerges also as a product of individual craft and a law of dynamic innovation. 

Registration Link: https://law.stanford.edu/event/sclh-presents-ada-kuskowski-and-vernacular-law-writing-and-the-reinvention-of-customary-law-in-medieval-france/