BOOK REVIEW: Francesco SERPICO on Current trends in the historiography of inquisitions: themes and comparisons, edited by Irene Bueno, Vincenzo Lavenia and Riccardo Parmeggiani (Comparative Legal History, XIII (2025), nr. 1, June, pp. 132-137)

(Image source: Taylor&Francis)

The International Research Centre on the Inquisitions (INQUIRE) was established in 2020 at the Department of History and Culture at the University of Bologna. With an interdisciplinary methodological approach and free from nationalistic paradigms, the centre aims to promote the study of the Inquisitions by organising conferences, seminars and workshops, sponsor publications and editions of sources in digital formats, strengthen international collaboration, encourage comparisons and facilitate dialogue between researchers. The opening volume in the new series promoted by INQUIRE, which consists of contributions collected during the first annual conference with the addition of two further papers, endeavours to provide a complete overview of the main historiographical themes of the last decades of the medieval and modern Inquisitions in 18 chapters.

For any scholar researching the subject of the Inquisitions, there is always the risk of disorientation and confusion when faced with the quantity of works produced. It would be difficult to make even a rough estimate of the number of contributions that have analysed the structure and function of the inquisitorial tribunals throughout their centuries-old journey (from the Middle Ages to the present) and their immense geographical diffusion (a network that at its peak stretched from Rome to Madrid, from Mexico to Chile and from Brazil to the Indian shores). For this reason, the studies that address the bibliographical and historiographical aspects and focus on discerning the main lines of interpretation constitute a challenge for those who produce these works.

To read the full review, please click here. Online access is free for members of the European Society for Comparative Legal History. For further information about the volume on our blog, please visit here

DOI: 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2500207

BOOK: Mark ROSEMAN & Dan STONE (eds.), Contexts: Origins, Comparisons, Entanglements [The Cambridge History of the Holocaust, ed. Mark ROSEMAN; vol. 1] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), ISBN 9781108913614

 

(image source: Cambridge)

Abstract:

The Cambridge History of the Holocaust offers a comprehensive and innovative overview of the complex field of Holocaust history from a variety of interpretive perspectives. The first volume begins with essays outlining the evolution of Holocaust historiography and the central conceptual and methodological questions facing historians. Further chapters provide insights into the longer-term causes and contexts of the Holocaust, before focusing on its immediate pre-history. The volume examines Holocaust archives, race-thinking and eugenics, violence in Weimar Germany, Hitler and Nazi ideology, and the implementation of antisemitic policies in the run up to the Second World War. Its ambitious coverage provides an unparalleled overview of the development of the policies that created the conditions necessary for the Holocaust to take place.

Table of contents:

General Editor's Introduction Mark Roseman

• Introduction to volume I Mark Roseman and Dan Stone
• 1. Historiography of the holocaust: early developments Boaz Cohen
• 2. The historiography of the holocaust: the years of diversification and integration Dan Stone
• 3. From 'final solution' to 'holocaust'. Autobiographical reflections Jane Caplan
• 4. The holocaust, genocide, and the origins of the commensurability problem A. Dirk Moses
• 5. Fascism and holocaust Aristotle Kallis
• 6. The holocaust and modernity Mark Roseman
• 7. Integrated approaches and boundaries in holocaust scholarship Dan Stone
• 8. Mapping the holocaust Tim Cole
• 9. Archiving the holocaust Jan Lambertz
• 10. Antisemitism in interwar Europe Ulrich Wyrwa
• 11. Race-thinking, Völkisch-nationalism, and eugenics Eric Kurlander
• 12. Inter-ethnic violence in Europe before the holocaust Robert Gerwarth
• 13. Communism and anti-Communism Andreas Wirsching
• 14. Weimar Germany's vanishing point: politics, violence and the rise of the nazis, 1918–1933 Annemarie Sammartino
• 15. Hitler and the Nazi party Thomas Weber
• 16. Hitler, state and party Helmut Walser Smith
• 17. Anti-semitic policy in the early years of the third Reich Hans Christian Jasch
• 18. Popular participation in anti-Jewish policy up to 1938 Michael Wildt
• 19. Nazi biopolitics: eugenics, racial policy, and the persecution of 'Asoziale,' 1933–1939 Richard F. Wetzell
• 20. 'Judenforschung' –Nazi Jewish studies Dirk Rupnow
• 21. Belonging and belongings: the dispossession of German Jews Christoph Kreutzmüller and Jonathan Zatlin
• 22. Kristallnacht Alan E. Steinweis
• 23. Lebensraum, autarky and a new imperial order Richard Overy
• 24. International responses to nazi race and Jewish policy, 1933–1939 Jonathan Wiesen.

 Read more here.

CONFERENCE: Annual Forum Young Legal Historians, "Compromis à la belge" (Ghent: UGent, 17-20 SEPT 2025)

 

(image source: blogger)

Wednesday, 17^th September 2025

Opening Ceremony

Venue: Faculty of Law and Criminology, Universiteitstraat 4, 9000 Gent

-          17:00-17:15: Opening Remarks by the Director of the Ghent Legal History Institute, Prof. Dr. Dirk Heirbaut.

-          17:15-17:30: Word of welcome by the Organizing Committee

-          17:30-18:00: Keynote speech Bruno Debaenst: The history of the Annual Forum for Young Legal Historians

-          18:00: official opening of the reception by the Dean of the Law Faculty prof. dr. Michel Tison

-          18:15-19:30: Opening ceremony reception

Thursday 18^th September 2025

Panel sessions

Venue: Faculty of Law and Criminology, Volderstraat 3, 9000 Gent

-          8:30-9:00: Registration day 1

-          9:00-10:30: Panel 1, 2, 3

-          10:30-11:00: Coffee break

-          11:00-12:30: Panel 4, 5, 6

-          12:30-14:00: Lunch break

-          14:00-15:30: Panel 7, 8, 9

-          15:30-16:00: Coffee break

-          16:00-17:30: Panel 10, 11, 12

Friday 19^th September 2025

Panel sessions

Venue: Faculty of Law and Criminology, Volderstraat 3, 9000 Gent

-          8:30-9:00: Registration day 2

-          9:00-10:30: Panel 13,14,15

-          10:30-11:00: Coffee break

-          11:00-12:30: Panel 16, 17, 18

-          12:30-14:00: Lunch break

-          14:00-15:30: Panel 19, 20

Closing ceremony

Venue: ‘Pacificatiezaal’, Ghent city hall (Botermarkt 1, 9000 Gent)

-          18u00: Welcome by the city administration

-          Keynote speech professor Julie Rocheton: Compromis à la Louisianaise

Conference Dinner

20:00 at Multatuli (Huidevetterskaai 40, 9000 Gent)

Saturday 20^th September 2025

City tour through the historical centre of Ghent

Point of assembly:  Faculty of Law and Criminology, Volderstraat 3, 9000 Gent

Panel sessions:

Panel 1: Compromise in Islamic and Ottoman Law – Amila Svraka-Imamovic, Rode Zaal

-          Afra Uysal: Muamalah Shar’iyyah: Fraus legis or legal compromise?

-          Dawid Szulc: Ottomanism as a concept legitimizing state and legal reforms in the Tanzimat era (1839–1876)

-          Rafał Kaczmarczyk: Forced compromise: crisis in the Muslim Religious Union in the Republic of Poland under the government’s management

-          Ramez Mahdi Mahmoud Ashour: Administrative Settlement as a Mechanism for Absorbing Disputes in Hybrid Legal Systems: The Case of Palestine (TBC)

Panel 2: Compromise and Finance – Elias Dessantis, Blauwe Zaal

-          Florenz Volkaert: Tariff Compromises in the History of International Law (1860-1914)

-          Ana Carolina Couto: Legal Designs of Compromise in Post-Abolition Brazil: Targeted Credit and the Encilhamento Crisis

-          Máté Pétervári: An Agreement Among Creditors Forcing Disagreeing Minority. The Theory of Compulsory Non-Bankruptcy Settlement in the Hungarian and German-language Jurisprudence

Panel 3: Compromise in Civil Law Changes – Emanuel van Dongen, Multimedialokaal

-          Robin Navez: The Belgian-Dutch civil codification of 1830: a lawmaking process encouraging parliamentary compromises?

-          Germans Pavlovskis: Legitimacy of the Roman Law Sources after the Adoption of the Codification of Baltic Private Law of 1864

-          Magdalena Ossowska-Tutaj: The Elusive Compromise of Abandoning Immovable Property in Polish Law

-          Michal Tutaj: Compromise or Dictate? Two Different Paths of Lawmaking: The Case of Polish and Turkish Obligation Law after World War I

Panel 4: “At the Crossroads of Revolution and Compromise” – The Legacy of the Conference of the justice of the Realm  of 1861 in Hungary – Dawid Szulc, Rode Zaal

-          Imre Képessy: “The Long and Winding Road” leading to the Approval of the Provisional Judicial Rules

-          Balázs Rigó: The Compromise in the Teaching of European and Hungarian Legal History at the Royal University of Pest in 1861

-          Gábor Bathó: Criminal Law on the Agenda of the Conference of the Justice of the Realm

-          Orsolya Papik: The Provisional Judicial Rules as a Gateway Between Constitutionalism and Modernisation (TBC)

 

Panel 5: Fundamental Rights: No Place for Compromise? - James Hannaford, Blauwe Zaal

-          Patricia Plana de Juan: Public Morality in Spanish Law (TBC)

-          Felix Dröll: Compromise and the exercise of rights - Japanese legal history between westernization and societal values

-          Linda Lielbriede: Right to Defense, Fair Trial, and Legal Compromise in Authoritarian and Transitional Regimes

Panel 6: (Post-)Colonial Compromises – Stephen Hewer, Multimedialokaal

-          Ilaria Masseroni: Polygamy as Colonial Compromise: Legal Pluralism and Missionary Governance in the Congo Free State (1885–1908)

-          Kato Desaever: Colonial concession regime as ‘compromis à la Belge’ between State & concessionaire

-          Pietro Reginato Costa Callado: Achieving Consensus in a Polarized World: The Role of Compromise in the Adoption of UNGA Resolution 1803 (XVII)

-          Daglié Colaço: Compromises in the Age of Empires: Belgian Presence on Brazil’s Western Frontier (1880–1914)

Panel 7: Compromises in Function of Social Protection – Bruno Debaenst, Rode Zaal

-          Caroline Desbois: From One Master to Another: The Mobility of Apprentices and Their Contacts in Parisian Compagnonnage During the 17th and 18th Centuries

-          Louis Debersaques: When it rains, it pours. The compromise of safety by operating outside the agreed period in public construction works (c. 1875)

-          Elizaveta Stetsenko: Defects in provision of medical care: legal ways to find a compromise 

-          Marcelo Muñoz Perdiguero - Heinrich Pesch and the quest for compromise and middle way

Panel 8: Crime and Punishment – Stephen Hewer, Blauwe Zaal 

-          Letizia Solazzi: The third school of criminal law: an Italian compromise

-          Wang Sarinai: The concept of collective responsibility in ancient Mongolian law

Panel 9: Compromises in the Creation of Criminal Legislation – Ana Paula Zappellini Sassi, Multimedialokaal

-          Benedek Varga: The Criminalization of Tax Fraud in Interwar Hungary: A Dogmatic and Historical Analysis of Act XXXII of 1920 

-          Edouard Delrée: Undying or Walking Dead? Scope and Trajectories of Two Major Long-Term Legal Compromises in Belgian Criminal Procedure (19th-21st centuries) 

 

Panel 10: Canon Law and Compromise – Antoine Leclère, Rode Zaal

-          Shiri Roelofs: Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) on Money Exchange: The Role of Canon, Roman, and Natural Law

-          Emilie Gérard: Pleading for tolerance: Charles Ancillon’s advocacy for the reinstatement of the Edict of Nantes

-          Łukasz Gołaszewski: Effective, ineffective and even informal compromise. Conflict resolution by way of settlement in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the light of records of noble and ecclesiastical courts from Podlasie

-          Ana Luiza Ferreira Gomes Silva: Teaching the Libri Feudorum in Leuven Across Three Centuries: Compromising Interpretation with Changing Contexts?

Panel 11: State Responsibilities during and after Times of War – Florenz Volkaert, Blauwe Zaal

-          Benedict Vanlanduyt: the restitution of movable and immovable goods in peace treaties between 1482-1715 

-          Louise Martens: Political Incivism of Belgian Lawyers on The Verge of The Repression

-          Michał Stokowski: Retaliation or reconciliation - responsibility for the crimes of the World War II on the example of legislation Poland and Belgium

-          Stefano Cattelan: Maritime Neutrality in the 18th Century: Seeking a Compromise Between the Rights of Belligerents and Neutrals

Panel 12: The Contrasting Roles of Compromise in Emancipation – Kaat Cappelle, Multimedialokaal

-          Ana Paula Zappellini Sassi: The discipline of female sexual honour within sexual crimes: the "honest woman" concept as a crossing-borders patriarchal compromise? (Italy—Brazil, 1889-1930)

-          David Karacsony: Discrimination and disadvantaged social groups in Roman law

-          Wang Jing: Title TBD (TBC)

-          Laura Rodriques: Compromise and Democratic Transition in the “Convenção Nacional do Negro Brasileiro” (1945-1951) (TBC) 

Panel 13: Contractual Compromises in Roman Law – Niels Fieremans, Rode Zaal

-          Michael Binder: Pactum de non petendo: A Compromise? 

-          Yüce Tunay: The role of Bonus Vir in Conflicts Arising from Commercial Activities in Roman Law with a comparison of Ottoman Islamic Law and Turkish Modern Law

-          David Magalhães: “Transactio”. The enduring Roman roots of settlement of controversies by agreement

-          Adrien Mociulschi: Compromises in commercial matters: the example of intuitu personae consensualism in contract law in Rome

-          Ahmet Arslan: The Role of Compromise in German Contract Law: Balancing Interests under Clausula Rebus Sic Stantibus and the Doctrine of Impossibility

Panel 14: Compromise and the Circulation of Ideas – Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde, Blauwe Zaal

-          Katarzyna Latek: "When French books were Belgian'- the role and influence of Belgian contrefacon in shaping the legal thought in Europe

-          Ryo Mochizuki: Censorship conducted by universities in early modern Germany: Negotiation and compromise between the duke of Bavaria, the University of Ingolstadt, and its subjects

-          Joana Noguiera de Freitas: The Circulation of Notarial Forms in The Portuguese Empire during The Late Eighteenth Century

-          Marco Castelli: Technical Choice or Editorial Compromise? Early Editions of the Commentaries on the Liber Extra (TBC)

Panel 15: Compromise and Dispute Resolution – Imre Képessy, Multimedialokaal

-          Amila Svraka-Imamovic: Compromise as a Dispute Resolution Mechanism in Shari'ah Law: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications 

-          Sonja Dieckman: The role of compromise in Rome

-          Tea Dularidze: The Tradition of Compromise in Antiquity (TBC)

-          Przemysław Gawron & Jan Jerzy Sowa (TBC): A compromise in the land criminal law of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Panel 16: Compromise and Judicial Organisation – Marie De Beul, Rode Zaal

-          Mariusz Mohyluk: On Justices of the Peace in the Second and Third Polish Republics: Seeking Compromise

-          Kacper Górski: Compromise or Noble Supremacy? The Municipal-Castrensial Mixed Court (iudicium mixtum) in Early Modern Poland

-          Wojciech Wydmański: Arbitration Courts in Lodz in 1918-1939 (TBC)

 

Panel 17: Pardons and Amnesties – Julie Rocheton, Blauwe Zaal

-          Louis Bremond: Amnesties: Concealing the Chaos

-          Elias Dessantis: Between Memory and Amnesia: World War II and the Belgian Amnesty

-          James Hannaford: The Politics of the Pardon: The Use of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy in Extradition Cases

-          Mihai Dragumirescu: The Gentle Hand of the Despot: State Forgiveness in Communist Romania

-          Grigorij Tschernjawskyj: Compromise in a divided Republic: Amnesty in Weimar Germany

Panel 18: Liberalism vs. Compromise – Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde, Multimedialokaal

-          Wout Vandermeulen: No more compromises? The legal historical roots of art. 101-102 TFEU in German Ordoliberalism

-          Damian Szczepaniak: Between liberalism and socialism. Right to property in the work on the Polish March Constitution of 1921 

-          Delphine Sirks: Mutual marine insurances in early modern Friesland and Groningen

Panel 19: Compromise in Constitutional History – Wouter De Rycke, Rode Zaal

-          Giulia Mannarini: Compromise in the evolution of history and political-constitutional thought

-          Lawrence Whitworth: Does the gradual evolution of the legal process create compromise in legal decision-making, and, if so, does slow progression enhance the legal decision-making process by providing continuity or undermine the legal decision-making process through its inherent laggardness?

-          Antoine Leclère: The Liège Revolution and the Electoral Congress of Frankfurt (1790): A Constitutional Compromise in Question

-          Maksymilian Francuz: “The switch in time that saved nine” – the compromise at the heart of the “constitutional revolution” of 1937 in and around the Supreme Court of the United States

Panel 20: Ownership and Inheritance – Louis Bremond, Blauwe Zaal

-          Fangfang Tian: Possession, Ownership, and Fiction: Compromise in the Roman Law of Res

-          Yanwen Wang: Jurisprudence of Exception: The Soldier’s Will and Legal Compromise in Roman Inheritance Law

-          Vincent Van den Eynde: Between legal certainty and testamentary freedom: regulating testamentary inalienability clauses and third-party rights in the early modern southern Netherlands (c. 1500-1600)

VeVenue: Ghent University Aula Campus (Voldersstraat/Universiteitstraat, 9000 GHENT, Belgium).