CONFERENCE (incl PhD Roundtable): Imperialism, Sovereignty and the making of International Law; 20 years on, with Antony Anghie (Melbourne and online: Laureate Research Program Global Corporations & International Law, 7-8 AUG 2025); DEADLINE 12 DEC 2024

 

(image source: LPGCIL)

Abstract:

2025 will mark the 20th anniversary of Antony Anghie’s groundbreaking work, Sovereignty, Imperialism and the Making of International Law (CUP 2005). Between 5 and 8 August 2025, we will be holding a suite of events, both in person in Melbourne, and online, to mark the occasion. On the evening of Tuesday 5 August, Professor Tony Anghie will deliver the George Turner Lecture at the Melbourne Law School. On Wednesday 6 August we will have a PhD Roundtable, and on 7 and 8 August 2025, we will be the conference to reflect on the contribution and enduring influence of the book on the field. On Thursday evening we will launch the TWAIL Handbook edited by Tony Anghie, B.S. Chimni, Vasuki Nesiah, Michael Fakhri and Karin Mickelson in a hybrid event.

 In-person papers:

Abstracts are currently being invited for papers for the conference. Papers can address the legacies, formative influences, key themes and questions associated with the book. Contributions from scholars in and of the Global South are particularly encouraged. Send abstracts of 150-200 words to LP-GCIL@unimelb.edu.au with the subject header: Abstract Anghie Conf 2025. Contributions can take two formats:  Papers of 15-20 minutes length and Reflections of 5-7 minutes.   Please name your abstract file: Abstract_Anghi Conf_[your last name].  In the document, please specify format (paper or reflection), title, your name (last name capitalised), discipline, institutional affiliation, and your contact details. At this stage we are only requesting abstracts for those who plan to attend in person.  No travel funding is available, but successful applicants will be notified by 22 December 2024 to enable them to seek funding elsewhere.

Online participation:

The Conference will be held in plenary style so there will be a limited number of spaces, however the conference will be open to attendance by all. We may have a second call for online participation in the new year. 

Read more here. 

BOOK: Dante FEDELE, Randall LESAFFER, Pierre SAVY (eds.), Avant l'État. Droit international et pluralisme politico-juridique en Europe, XIIIe-XVIIe siècle (Rome: Historia et ius, 2024). ISBN: 9791281621077 [OPEN ACCESS]

(Image source: Historia et Ius)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Dante Fedele, Randall Lesaffer, Pierre Savy, Introduction;

Souveraineté et gouvernement

• Armand Jamme, Non ratione feudi, sed occasione peccati. Formes et motifs du devoir d’ingérence pontifical (XIIIe-XIVe siècles);
• Robert von Friedeburg, The Protection of the Subject: Allegedly «Civilized» vs Allegedly «Despotic» Patterns of the Treatment of Subjects as Described in Arguments 1570s to 1650s;

Guerre et représailles

• Andrea Padovani, I peccati del guerriero nelle Summae confessorum medievali e protomoderne;
• Philippine Christina, Van den Brande, Reprisal in Theory and Practice: The Seventeenth-Century Case of Robert Powlett;

Conflits et frontières

• Pierre-Anne Forcadet, Arbitrage, justice internationale et souveraineté au XIIIe siècle;
• Romain Goudjil, La juridiction du podestat génois de Péra au prisme du registre du patriarcat de Constantinople;
• Giovanni Chiodi, Nisi in terris quae sunt sub uno principe generali. Per una storia del diritto di estradizione nel medioevo e nella prima età moderna;
• Andrew Vidali, Borders, Criminal Justice, and International Law: Extradition Agreements in Renaissance Italy;

Rapports extra-européens

• Bart Wauters, Aquinas on «Infidel» Dominium;
• Dominique Valérian, Traités de paix et normes juridico-religieuses en Méditerranée à la fin du Moyen Âge. Entre pluralisme normatif et hiérarchie des normes;
• Marc de Wilde, Protecting Non-Christian Allies: Hugo Grotius’s Justification of Dutch Overseas Expansion in the East Indies;
• Gaëlle Demelemestre, Conflits et controverses sur le statut des mers aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles : La délicate question des territoires sans maître;
• Luisa Brunori, Le Livre IX de la Recopilación de Leyes de las Indias entre souveraineté commerciale et droit « proto-colonial »;

Commerces et péages

• Nicola Carotenuto, La giustizia dei mercanti. Il caso di Venezia medievale;
• Cédric Quertier, Florence, entre problème portuaire et diplomatie économique : quelques remarques sur les traités commerciaux et sur les instances de régulation des conflits (XIIIe-XIVe siècle);
• Bastien Carpentier, Jeux d’appartenances, logiques de concurrence et construction sociale des institutions de juridiction. Filippo Centurione Cantelli, marchand génois de Séville, et la monarchie des Habsbourg (XVIe siècle);
• Charlotte Backerra, Tolls, Rights, Laws, and Brothers: the Rhine and Hesse at the Intersection of Legal Pluralism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries;

Politique et diplomatie

• Stéphane Péquignot, Faire fi du pluralisme juridico-politique ? À propos de quelques « singulier[s] messaige[s] » (Lulle, Villeneuve, Mézières);
• Esther Tello-Hernández, Entre activité publique et activité privée : l’activité diplomatique et financière des banquiers de la couronne d’Aragon à la curie d’Avignon au XIVe siècle;
• Francesco Bozzi, Videtur maxima inequalitas. Note sulle aderenze dei Gonzaga (XIV-XV secolo);
• Isabella Lazzarini, A Spider’s Web. Agreements, Pacts and Alliances before, around and after the Peace of Lodi (Northern Italy, 1454-1455);
• Jean Sénié, L’enchevêtrement des droits dans le gouvernement à distance : les territoires français des petits États italiens (XVIe-XVIIe siècles);
• Alain Wijffels, Épilogue : L’État avant l’État.

The entire volume can be downloaded for free at this link.

BOOK PRESENTATION: 'Per una storia dei diritti delle donne' (Bologna: Palazzo Hercolani, 9 dicembre 2024, h. 15.00)

 

(Source: Storia del diritto)

BOOK: Paolo CAROLI, Transitional Justice in Italy and the Crimes of Facism and Nazism [Routledge Research in Legal History] (London: Routledge, 2024), 280 p., ISBN 9781032226231, 31,99 GBP

 

(image: Routledge)

Abstract:

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the Italian experience of transitional justice examining how the crimes of Fascism and World War II have been dealt with from a comparative perspective. Applying an interdisciplinary and comparative methodology, the book offers a detailed reconstruction of the prosecution of the crimes of Fascism and the Italian Social Republic as well as crimes committed by Nazi soldiers against Italian civilians and those of the Italian army against foreign populations. It also explores the legal qualification and prosecution of the actions of the Resistance. Particular focus is given to the Togliatti amnesty, the major turning point, through comparisons to the wider European post-WWII transitional scenario and other relevant transitional amnesties, allowing consideration of the intense debate on the legitimacy of amnesties under international law. The book evaluates the Italian experience and provides an ideal framework to assess the complexity of the interdependencies between time, historical memory and the use of criminal law. In a historical moment marked by the resurgence of racism, neo-Fascism, falsifications of the past, as well as the desire to amend the faults of the past, the Italian unfinished experience of dealing with the Fascist era can help move the discussion forward. The book will be an essential reading for students, researchers and academics in International Criminal Law, Transitional Justice, History, Memory Studies and Political Science.

Table of contents:

1. Historical, legal and judicial context of the transition 2. The Togliatti amnesty 3. The Togliatti amnesty within the framework of transitional justice 4. The Italian experience within the framework of transitional justice 5. The legacy of the Italian transitional justice 

On the author:

Paolo Caroli is Lecturer of Criminal Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Turin, Italy. Previously, he was Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the Faculty of Law at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. 

Read more here.

BOOK: Ronald CAR, Searching for a Leftist Constitutionalism. The German Left vs. the Rechtsstaat 1848-1949 [Studies in the History of Law and Justice, 30, eds. Mortimer SELLERS & Georges MARTYN] (Heidelberg: Springer, 2024), VI + 208 p. ISBN 978-3-031-62097-3, € 148,39

 

(image source: Springer)

Abstract:

Is there a viable leftist constitutionalism that we can juxtapose with liberal constitutionalism, or is there really no alternative? If the left is considered an a priori enemy of the principle of the rule of law, the equal chance condition proves illusory. Accordingly, those asking for changes to social institutions will deem constitutionalism undemocratic. Hence, in our times of silent de-constitutionalization at the global level and rising populism and democratic backsliding at the national level, this book offers a valuable opportunity to reconsider one of the founding principles of liberal constitutionalism, the Rechtsstaat. It re-examines the controversies that accompanied the affirmation of the concept in a long-term perspective, from 1848 to the post-World War II constitutional debates. Since 1848 the German left has challenged the dominant liberal view of legitimacy, mainly by adopting Marx’s critique of the ideology of law and the state. Thus, the left has had to challenge not only the established order, but also the mainstream political and legal culture generated by the liberal discourse on rights. In search of constitutional viability, the left has oscillated between two tendencies. On the one hand, it has denounced the discourse on rights as an ideological smokescreen used by the ruling class to keep us from paying more attention to the actual level of democracy within the parties, the governmental bodies and in everyday social relations. On the other hand, the left has attempted to adjust its platform to the mainstream idea of constitutional legitimacy by devising its own sozialer Rechtsstaat. However, the break-even point has proven hard to find. If the acceptance of liberal principles was seen as less than wholehearted, leftist constitutional proposals aroused suspicions of a coverup for an unconstitutional rule (Unrechtsstaat). On the other hand, when the left has accepted liberal constitutional principles in full, its potential to challenge the social status quo has ultimately proven to be disappointing. The controversy culminated in a desperate and largely unknown attempt to devise a constitutional compromise between Liberalism and Socialism in East Berlin in the wake of the Cold War. Although doomed to fail and devoid of democratic credibility, the debates of the East German constitutional commission in 1948 offer important insights into a century of experiences, trials and errors in constitution-making seen from the leftist perspective.

Read more here: DOI 10.1007/978-3-031-62098-0.

VIRTUAL LIBRARY: Ouvrages, Éditions numériques du CHJ (Lille: UMR 8025 CNRS-Université de Lille, 1982-2023) [OPEN ACCESS]

 

The Centre d'histoire judiciaire (Université de Lille/CNRS, UMR 8025) has published 62 volumes in open access from its previous print runs, from 1982 to 2023, with the licence "Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0)" on Nakala.

The "virtual library" contains edited volumes (e.g. acta of the Société d'histoire du droit et des institutions des pays flamands, picards et wallons, other conferences organised by the CHJ), but also monographs (e.g. Véronique Demars-Sion, Femmes séduites et abandonnées au 18e siècle, 1991). 

The various themes treated range from criminal justice, colonial law, labour law, diplomacy and law, the absolutist state, conflict resolution, governance to gender and judicial organisation.

Examples:

X (dir.), Justice populaire. Actes des journées de la société d'histoire du droit, tenues à Lille, 25-28 mai 1989 [L'Espace Juridique] (Lille: CHJ, 1992), ISBN 290851009X
DOI 10.34847/nkl.8ec543dw

Jacques LORGNIER (dir.), Justice & République(s) [L'Espace juridique] (Lille: CHJ, 1993), ISBN 290851012X
DOI 10.34847/nkl.c98b56z2

X (dir.), Justice et institutions françaises en Belgique (1795-1815). Actes du colloque tenu à l'Université de Lille II les 1, 2 et 3 juin 1995 [L'espace juridique] (Lille: CHJ, 1996)
DOI 10.34847/nkl.ead23yj5

Serge DAUCHY, Sylvie HUMBERT & Jean-Pierre ROYER (dir.), Le juge de paix. Nouvelles contributions européennes (Lille: CHJ, 1995), ISBN 2910114023
DOI 10.34847/nkl.ce71rc2n

Véronique DEMARS-SION, Femmes séduites et abandonnées au 18e siècle. L'exemple du Cambrésis [L'espace juridique] (Lille: CHJ, 1991), ISBN 2908510081
DOI 10.34847/nkl.8f34v6kq

Serge DACHY & Catherine LECOMTE (dir.), L'absolutisme éclairé [Société d'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des Pays Flamands, Picards et Wallons] (Lille: CHJ, 2002), ISBN 29101140508
DOI 10.34847/nkl.5a81wr71

Bernard DURAND & Leah OTIS-COUR (dir.), La torture judiciaire. Approches historiques et juridiques (Lille: CHJ, 2002), ISBN 2910114-066
DOI 10.34847/nkl.dae9q2t1

Bernard DURAND & Maité LESNÉ-FERRET (dir.), Justice pénale et droit des clercs en Europe, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles [Histoire de la Justice] (Lille: CHJ, 2005), ISBN 2910114112
DOI 10.34847/nkl.a80cdny7

Sylvie HUMBERT & Jean-Pierre ROYER (dir.), Auteurs et Acteurs de la Séparation des Eglises et de l'Etat. Actes du colloque tenu à Lille les 29 et 30 septembre 2005 (Lille: CHJ, 2007), ISBN 2910114171
DOI 10.34847/nkl.6b686yp4

Bernard DURAND & Martine FABRE (dir.), Continuités ou ruptures ? Cour de cassation en France - Cour Suprême au Maroc [Histoire de la Justice] (Lille: CHJ, 2010), ISBN 2910114228
DOI 10.34847/nkl.4afab6cn

Véronique DEMARS-SION & Renée MARTINAGE (dir.), Diplomates et diplomatie. Actes des Journées internationales tenues à Péronne du 22 au 23 mai 2009 [Société d'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des Pays Flamands, Picards et Wallons] (Lille: CHJ, 2013), ISBN 290114309
DOI 10.34847/nkl.2bcbx6tf

Sandra GÉRARD-LOISEAU & Florence RENUCCI (dir.), Les normes au Maghreb (XIXe-XXe siècle) (Lille: CHJ, 2016), ISBN 2910114325
DOI 10.34847/nkl.a60a6wg3

Sebastiaan VANDENBOGAERDE, Iris LELLOUCHE, Hélène DUFFULER-VIALLE, Sébastian DHALLUIN & Bruno DEBAENST (dir.), (Wo)Men in Legal History (Lille: CHJ, 2016), ISBN 2910114333 
DOI 10.34847/nkl.ec5bwvb5

Luisa BRUNORI, Farid LEKÉAL & Alain WIJFFELS (dir.), Gouvernance, justice et santé (Lille: CHJ, 2020), ISBN 2910114368
DOI 10.34847/nkl.11fez952

Pascal HEPNER, Tanguy LE MARC'HADOUR & Christian PFISTER-LANGANAY, Construire et Déconstruire les territoires. Actes des Journées internationales tenues à Arras les 11 et 12 mai 2018 [Société d'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des Pays Flamands, Picards et Wallons] (Lille: CHJ, 2023).
DOI 10.34847/nkl.8cde5896

The full list of 62 volumes can be read or downloaded here.

BOOK: Pierre PRÉTOU, L’invention de la piraterie en France au Moyen Age (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2021). ISBN: 2130829007, pp. 228, 23,00 €

 

(Source: PUF)

ABOUT THE BOOK

À la fin du Moyen Âge, après des siècles d'abandon du lexique maritime antique, les écritures souveraines s'agitent soudain, car les mots d'une nouvelle accusation pénale sublime - le crime de piraterie des Latins - s'infiltrent dans les archives. Peu à peu, le lexique médiéval des « larrons de mer » se retire des rivages, tandis que s'avance le « pirate » : la France réinventait son criminel en mer au seuil de la modernité. Cette mécanique fut avant tout atlantique et royale : une invention, ou découverte, de la piraterie, telle une relique sainte du passé romain qui serait remontée à la surface avant d'être exploitée par les Valois pour ses vertus pénales. Cette apparition médiévale du pirate français est remarquable en ce qu'elle scrutait désormais l'obéissance des gens de mer, ainsi mis en sujétion par une inflexion terrible de la doctrine pénale. Le royaume de France, devenu une puissance maritime au XVe siècle, livrait ici un nouveau récit pénal des navigations, dans lequel pirates et rois se combattaient, pour mieux transformer le statut de ses frontières atlantiques.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pierre Prétou est professeur d’histoire du Moyen Âge à La Rochelle Université. Spécialiste de l’histoire de la justice dans les espaces atlantiques, il est membre de l’UMR LIENSs, (Littoral, Environnement et Sociétés, CNRS, UMR 7266). Il a également codirigé (avec D. Roland) Fureur et cruauté des capitaines en mer (PUR, 2012).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPITRE 1. LES VIOLENCES MEDIEVALES EN MER

I. L’extinction des récits pirates

II. Le règlement des conflits maritimes

III. L’Amirauté contre le crime

CHAPITRE 2. LA FABRIQUE DU MALEFICE MARITIME

I. Les mers diaboliques

II. Le lexique criminel

III. Le retour du pirate antique

CHAPITRE 3. LE ROYAUME CONTRE LES PIRATES

I. La piraterie en Parlement

II. Les pirates dans les Jugements de la mer

III. Les traités internationaux et les pirates

Conclusion

Pièces justificatives/Table des figures/Sources et bibliographie

More information and preview with the publisher.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Oaths and Oath-Taking in Historical Perspective: Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire, 1700 to the Present (Newcastle: Northumbria University in Newcastle, 7 MAR 2025) (DEADLINE 20 DEC 2024)

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Organisers: Henry Miller and James McConnel, Northumbria University

As the 2023 coronation of King Charles III highlighted, oaths remain a feature of modern British public life. Indeed, though largely taken for granted, oaths and declarations continue to play a much wider role within many state agencies (e.g., cabinet government,  parliaments, the judiciary, the magistracy, the armed forces, and the police force). Oaths also feature in other parts of life in the UK: professions including doctors, senior lawyers, and CoE ministers are still required to take oaths. Oaths are also a requirement of some civil society groups (e.g., the Scouts) and are required for membership of some mass-membership associations (e.g., Freemasonry and Orangeism). And since 2004, oaths have been performed at UK citizenship ceremonies up and down the country. Crucially,  all these oaths are not just subscribed to in writing, but also performed in person, often in a public, ceremonial context.

In recent decades, early modern historians have advanced our understandings of oaths and oath-taking. As a result, we now have a much better understanding of the role of oaths in changing conceptions of the political community, evolving crown-subject/state-citizen  relations, and in relation to generating trust during the upheavals of the seventeenth century and their aftermath. However, understanding the evolution and role of oaths over the longue durée (especially beyond the early eighteenth century) requires more attention, and without assuming they inevitably declined after their early modern heyday. While in the British context, the practice of national oath-taking led by the state  declined after the early eighteenth century, oaths remained in common use for a wide variety of purposes. For example, oaths were ubiquitous in civil society, taken on a peer-to-peer basis on admission to friendly societies, trade unions, and various forms of voluntary association. Similarly, although the use of oaths as religious tests to disbar non-Anglicans from public office was largely dismantled in the nineteenth century, this does not explain the varied and continued use of written and oral oaths right  up to the present day. Rather than charting a decline from an early modern peak and seeing oaths as an archaic practice that retains a residual presence today, we instead want to explore the different roles that oaths perform and have performed and why this  has mattered in different temporal, geographic, social, and political contexts.  

This one-day interdisciplinary conference to be held on Friday 7 March 2025 at Northumbria University in Newcastle seeks to bring together early modern and modern historians, as well as scholars from across the humanities and social sciences, to consider the historical and contemporary roles of oaths and oath-taking in Britain and Ireland, and beyond. The keynote lecture will be delivered by Prof. Ted Vallance (Roehampton).  

Possible topics could include, but are not confined to:

Language and rituals of oaths
Subversive oaths
Oaths and secrecy  
Religious oaths and tests
Loyalty, the constitution, and the state
Assertory and promissory oaths
Perjury and oaths as legal instruments
Oaths and modernity
Oaths, business, and capitalism
Oaths, performance, practice, and behaviour
Oaths as speech acts
Oaths, vows, swearing, and promises
Oaths and dispute resolution
Oath and material culture
Literacy and oath taking
Oaths and the history of emotions
Resisting oaths
Conscience and notions of honour
Oaths and marriage
Oaths as abjurations
Oaths and professionalism
Mundane / profane oaths
Comparative perspectives on oaths and oath-taking
 
We welcome proposals of c. 250 words (for 15-minute in-person presentations) concerning these or other topics, to be submitted, along with a short CV, by the end of Friday, 20 December 2024. The submissions should be sent  to henry.miller@northumbria.ac.uk.  Proposers will be informed of the outcome in early January 2025.  

We have some limited funding available to support travel and, if appropriate, accommodation, expenses costs of speakers: this will be reserved for those who are early career researchers, independent scholars, or in fixed term posts. If you wish to be considered  for this financial support, please indicate your likely costs of attending the workshop; and we would also ask that you first draw on any internal sources to which you have access.

(source: Legal History Blog)

BOOK: Gregory J. DURSTON, A "Dereliction of Moral Feeling". Crime in Victorian Norfolk (Bury St Edmonds: Abramis, 2024), 290 p. ISBN 1845498356

 

(image source: Saxo)

Abstract:

This book considers crime in Norfolk during the Victorian era. Although a companion volume to the author's earlier book on the criminal justice system in the same part of East Anglia, it can be read entirely independently of that work. It examines the pattern, nature, and incidence of offending in the county during the years from about 1837 to 1901. However, as well as examining general trends in crime over that period, the book also focuses in specific detail on important individual offences, such as, and inter alia, murder, rape, sodomy, burglary, robbery, theft and poaching. The study of crime in England's more rural counties at this time has often been neglected in favour of the country's rapidly expanding, and so 'eye-catching', urban, mining, and industrial parts, especially London and the North. The book goes some way to redressing this neglect by focusing on an area where social change and population increase had been slightly more modest, but which still made up a significant part of the nation, even at the end of the Victorian period.

Read more here. 

ARTICLE: Matthias LUTZ-BACHMANN, "Die Transformation des Konzepts des »gerechten Kriegs« (»bellum iustum«) in der Geschichte der Philosophie: Von Thomas von Aquin bis zur Schule von Salamanca" (Archiv des Völkerrechts LXII (2024), Nr. 2, 211-234)

 

(image source: Mohr Siebeck)

Abstract:

The article is first dealing with the very specific arguments of the doctrine of »Just War« in the »Summa theologiae« II-II, q. 40 of Thomas Aquinas. It refers second to the process of a massive transformation by which authors of the so-called »School of Salamanca« in early modern times like Vitoria, Cano or Suárez modified the original »Just War«-theory of Aquinas. And it reflects finally upon the relevance and meaning of these transformations for the systematic discussion of classical »Just-War«-theory today, that means in a time after Kant's »theory of peace« on the one hand and the constitution of the UN-Charter on the other by which the legitimacy of war is limited just to cases of a self-defense of states.

On the author:

Born 1952; director of the "Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften" at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

Read more here: DOI 10.1628/avr-2024-0011.

DATABASE: Chartes d’Occitanie (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, et al.)

(Image source: Chartes d'Occitanie)

Le site Chartes d’Occitanie (here) a pour objectif de mettre à la disposition des médiévistes des bases de données et de textes sur la documentation juridique de la France méridionale : chartes de coutumes, actes de la pratique, inventaires et autres formes d’actes à caractère administratif.

Ces documents, dispersés dans des centaines de publications ou encore largement inédits, pourront ainsi être soumis à des recherches de mots en plein texte de façon systématique, en utilisant des filtres chronologiques, linguistiques ou documentaires. De ce point de vue, le site reprend, prolonge ou imite de façon simplifiée d’autres entreprises similaires telles que les bases mises en ligne sur Telma, Scripta ou CBMA.

Une attention spéciale a toutefois été accordée aux coordonnées géographiques de ces documents. En situant le producteur du fonds documentaire ou en localisant à l’échelle des communes actuelles les biens ou les communautés concernées par ces actes, les bases de données de Chartes d’Occitanie ont été conçues pour permettre le développement de recherches spatialisées. Une fonction Webmapping permet notamment de visualiser en temps réel la distribution géographique du résultat de chaque recherche. Disponible pour l’heure à l’échelle des départements seulement, elle sera développée ultérieurement à l’échelle des communes actuelles. Cette base de données devrait ainsi permettre de repérer, bien plus facilement qu’aujourd’hui, les concentrations de documents, de faits linguistiques ou de caractéristiques diplomatiques invisibilisées par la dispersion des fonds et des publications.

Les bases mises en ligne ont été conçues, en premier lieu, pour répondre aux enjeux actuels de l’histoire médiévale des sociétés occitanes, des pays de droit écrit et des sociétés de la France méridionale de façon plus générale. S’explique ainsi la place accordée aux chartes de coutumes, à la langue des textes et aux écritures laïques. D’autres bases ont été développées pour rendre plus spécialement accessibles les centaines, voire les milliers de transcriptions inédites réalisées dans le cadre de chantiers et de travaux de recherche dirigés par les membres de l’équipe Terrae.

• La base de données sur les chartes de coutumes de la France méridionale a pour ambition de rendre enfin utilisable la masse prodigieuse des coutumes, franchises, statuts et paréages qui ont été édités depuis la fin du XIXe siècle dans une myriade de publications. Dans son catalogue des textes édités, Jean-Marie Carbasse soulignait déjà en 1979 que la dispersion des éditions rendait quasiment impossible une analyse systématique de ces textes. En repartant de son inventaire, en exploitant les catalogues et les textes rassemblés sous la direction de Maurice Berthe et Mireille Mousnier, en mettant à profit les campagnes d’OCRisation réalisée par l’équipe Terrae, notre base de données fournira, dans un premier temps, un catalogue analytique et géoréférencé de ces documents coutumiers ; et très rapidement, nous l’espérons, une bonne partie de ces textes en version numérique.

• La base de données sur les actes antérieurs à 1300 été conçue en miroir de la base Chartae Galliae mise en ligne par Telma, à une échelle plus réduite. Elle vise, de la même façon, à recueillir une part significative des actes de la pratique déjà publiés, mais laisse de côté l’identité des acteurs ou les formes diplomatiques pour privilégier le repérage géographique des actes et des fonds documentaires. Elle sera, en outre, alimentée par les bases annexes, principalement issues de la transcription d’actes inédits.

• La base de données sur les actes des ordres militaires essaiera évidemment de mettre en ligne les textes issus de cartulaires ou de chartriers déjà publiés (Montsaunès, Vaour, Douzens, La Selve…), mais devrait permettre, en outre, d’exploiter la masse des documents du fonds de l’ordre de Malte conservés aux archives de la Haute-Garonne (série H Malte) et transcrits dans le cadre des stages de paléographie dirigés par Hélène Débax, ou dans les copieuses annexes des mémoires de master dirigés par Hélène Débax et Roland Viader.

• Les bases de données sur le Liber Reddituum, les actes de Grandselve et les actes de l’évêché et du chapitre de Rodez sont le fruit des Chantiers d’histoire organisés par l’équipe Terrae depuis près de vingt ans pour insérer les étudiants du master Mondes médiévaux de l’Université de Toulouse dans des dispositifs de recherche. Elles compilent ainsi l’équivalent de quelques milliers d’actes inédits.

• La base de données sur les actes et cartulaires de Grandselve est un peu particulière. Pensée pour étudier les processus d’écriture, réécriture, copie et archivage de la documentation, elle vise à distinguer et établir les concordances entre les principales sources de conservation de ces documents : les cinq cartulaires conservés par la Bibliothèque nationale, les deux cartulaires-rouleaux et le fonds de parchemins conservés aux Archives de la Haute-Garonne, le fonds de parchemins conservé aux Archives nationales, les trois volumes de la collection Doat et les deux inventaires partiels conservés aux Archives de la Haute-Garonne et aux Archives nationales.

Further information can be found here.

BOOK: Elizabeth PAPP KAMALI, Saskia LETTMAIER & Nikitas HATZIMIHAIL (eds.), The Learned and Lived Law. Essays in Honour of Charles Donahue [Legal History Library, eds. Dirk HEIRBAUT, Matthew C. MIROW, Michelle MCKINLEY & Remco VAN RHEE; 70] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2024), XVIII + 594 p. ISBN 9789004710696, € 217,8

 

(image source: Brill)

On the editors:

Elizabeth Papp Kamali, J.D. (2007), Harvard Law School, Ph.D. (2015), University of Michigan, is the Austin Wakeman Scott Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and author of Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2019). Saskia Lettmaier, S.J.D. (2015), Harvard Law School, is Professor on the Faculty of Law, University of Kiel, Hamburg, and author of Broken Engagements: The Action for Breach of Promise of Marriage and the Feminine Ideal, 1800-1940 (Oxford, 2010), as well as Spouses, Church, and State: Marriage Law in England and Protestant Germany from the Reformation until the Close of the Nineteenth Century (Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming). Nikitas E. Hatzimihail, S.J.D. (2002), Harvard Law School, is Professor in the Department of Law, University of Cyprus and author of Preclassical Conflict of Laws (Cambridge, 2023).

Table of contents:

List of Figures and Tables

Notes on Contributors

Introduction
  Elizabeth Papp Kamali and Saskia Lettmaier

Part 1
Roman Law
1 Towards a Taxonomy of Witnesses in Roman Law
  James R. Townshend

2 “Si Bononiensis”: Glossators and the Conflicts of Law
  Nikitas Hatzimihail

3 Roman Property, Corporate Personhood, and the Politics of Natural Law in Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy: Venice, Baldus, and the res communes omnium
  Charles Bartlett

4 Abandonment, animus and animalia ferae naturae in Hugo Grotius’ De iure belli ac pacis
  Daniel Jacobs

5 “For the Sake of Mental Health and Mutual Peace”: The Transactio-Agreement in Early Modern Law and Theology
  Wim Decock

Part 2
Women, Marriage, and the Law
6 Consent in Medieval English Marriage and Misconduct
  Elizabeth Papp Kamali

7 Written Law and Practice: Realities for Women in Bas Languedoc in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
  Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch

8 Sex with Nuns in Medieval France
  Sara McDougall

9 Oikos and Oikonomika: The Early Modern Family as a Matrix of Modern Economics
  John Witte

10 Legal and Factual Uncertainty in a Seventeenth-Century French Marriage Case
  Saskia Lettmaier

11 Marriage Law between East and West: Charles Maigrot’s Dissertatio de Matrimonio Sinarum
  Stuart M. McManus

Part 3
Medieval and Early Modern Law
12 Getting Ahead in a Twelfth-Century City: The Ambitious Monks of Saint-Clément, Metz
  Samantha Kahn Herrick

13 The Papal Constitution Execrabilis (1317) and Clerical Justices in the English Royal Courts
  Ryan Rowberry

14 Dangerous Dreams: Le Songe du Vergier and the Expulsion of Jews from Fourteenth-Century France
  Rowan Dorin

15 Suicide in Early Modern Italy
  Elizabeth W. Mellyn

16 The “Desire of Deeds”: On Cherishing Medieval English Charters
  Carol Symes

Part 4
American Legal History
17 Lawyers and Their Book Collections: Notes from the Eighteenth Century
  Sally E. Hadden

18 The American Importation of the Comparative Accusatorial/Inquisitorial Divide: Francis Lieber’s Failed Transplant and Its Early Twentieth-Century Resurgence
  Amalia D. Kessler

Part 5
Literature and Legal Theory
19 Faust: Goethe’s Guide to Legal Progress
  Anton Chaevitch

20 Wesley Hohfeld’s Modernist Imagination
  Bharath Palle

Appendix: Reflections from Former Students
Appendix 1 When Giants Roamed: A Reflection
  Thomas S. Burns

Appendix 2 De magistro eruditissimo et beneficentissimo: A Reflection
  Mary Elizabeth Basile Chopas

Appendix 3 The Teachings of Charles Donahue on the Middle Ages from the Perspective of a Student of Mexican Legal History: A Reflection
  William Suárez-Potts

Appendix 4 Chi Squares, Chant, and Charlie: A Reflection
  Claire Valente

Bibliography

Index

Read the book  here: DOI 10.1163/9789004710696.

BOOK: Lyndsay CAMPBELL & Shaunnagh DORSETT (eds.), Legal Histories of Empire. Navigating Legalities (London: Routledge, 2025), 324 p. ISBN 9781032616179, 140 GBP

 

(image source: Routledge)

Abstract:

This collection brings together an international group of scholars in order to provide new insights into the diversity of imperial legalities.

Across empires, legalities were produced not just – or even – through the imperial imposition of laws and legal forms, but through local processes of negotiation and contestation. Far from the metropoles, local actors found ways to creatively navigate and subvert imperial frameworks and laws and to create space in which to shape new legalities, responsive to local circumstance and need. Covering topics as diverse as smuggling in eighteenth century Jersey, the criminalisation of female market women in World War II-era southern Nigeria, and whiteness and race in ‘sexual perversion’ cases in twentieth-century Malaya, the collection elaborates new legal histories of empire. Drawing from Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada, the USA, India, Sri Lanka, Africa and Malaysia, the collection brings together chapters that examine the stories of the peoples of empires and shows how they constituted, experienced, navigated and subverted the legal complexities of living under empire.

This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in law and history, but also to those with relevant interests in post-colonial and cultural studies, as well as in criminology and sociology.

Table of contents:

1. Navigating Legalities: Legal Histories of Empires 

Lyndsay Campbell and Shaunnagh Dorsett 

Part 1: Legalities 

2. Gerald of Wales, John Davies, and the Laws of the Irish in an English Colonial Perspective 

Craig Lyons 

3. Constituting a Colonial Crisis: Kielley v. Carson, St. John’s, 1838-43 

Lyndsay Campbell 

4. Recrafting Subjecthood through Exceptional Laws in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire 

Amanda Nettelbeck 

5. Making Empire: Writing the 1833 Ceylon Charter of Justice and Curial Reform in the British Empire 

Shaunnagh Dorsett 

Part 2: Negotiating Legalities 

6. Resisting and Extending Empire: How the Acadian People Shaped British and French Imperial Rule Through the Strategic Use of Law 

Robert Hamilton 

7. Arbitration and Empire: The Anti-Adjudicatory State in Bengal and British America, 1763–1775 

Christian R. Burset 

8. Legally Interconnecting Empires in the Americas: The Circulation of ‘Foreign’ Law Books in Québec and Louisiana from the 17th to the Early 19th Century 

Serge Dauchy 

9. Protestant State, Catholic Subjects: Religion, Law and Caste in Early Colonial Madras 

Aparna Balachandran 

10. Goomany Naik: Fragments of A ‘Non-Traditional’ Legal Biography 

Nishant Gokhale 

Part 3: Subverting Empire: Legalities and Illegalities 

11. Creative Friction, Legal Pluralism and the Eighteenth-Century Smuggling Economy in the Channel Islands 

David Chan Smith 

12. The ‘Price’ of War: The Criminalization and Punishment of Profiteers in Southern Nigeria during World War II 

Yolanda Chinelo Osondu 

13. Anxieties of Whiteness: Evidence, Race, and Emotions in the (Non-)Prosecution of the “Malayan ‘Sexual Perversion’ Cases,” 1938-1940 

Jack Jin Gary Lee 

14. Merchant Seafarers on British Ships: Lascars, Labour, Law and Empire in the Early 20th Century 

Diane Kirkby

On the editors:

Lyndsay Campbell is Professor in the Faculty of Law and Department of History, University of Calgary, Canada.

Read more here. 

BOOK: Jean-Marc THOUVENIN (ed.), Challenges of International Law at the Time of the Centenary of The Hague Academy of International Law/Les défis du droit international au tournant du centenaire de l’Académie de droit international de La Haye (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2024), 672 p. ISBN 978-90-04-71306-2, € 157,94

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

The celebration of the Academy’s Centenary in May 2023 merited first and foremost a solemn ceremony offering a platform for the leading experts of the institution to retrace its journey over its first hundred years, its links with the city of The Hague, with the Netherlands, with the Peace Palace, but also to show its relationship with the International Court of Justice, and, of course, to discuss the courses given at the Academy. It was equally important to look ahead to the Academy’s future. Its Centenary also called for a major Colloquium dedicated to international law. For the occasion, the Academy brought together a unique panel of leading figures from the international academic and judicial world to discuss the major themes of public interest in international law, the humanisation of international law and to tackle other burning issues such as extraterritoriality and climate change, among others. This book represents a written and indelible record of these two memorable events which marked the Academy’s “first“ centenary.

More information here. 

 

SEMINARS: Seminari di Storia della cultura giuridica francese (Roma: Università Roma Tre, 29 NOV, 5 DEC 2024)

 

(Source: Storia del diritto)

BOOK: Stefan ESDERS, Sören KASCHKE, Britta MISCHKE, Steffen PATZOLD, Dominik TRUMP, Karl UBL (eds.), Fränkische Herrschererlasse (814–840). Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Leges, Capitularia regum Francorum, Nova series, 4, (Wiesbden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2024). ISBN: 9783447119795

(Image source: Harrassowitz Verlag)

Die fränkischen Herrschererlasse (Kapitularien) gehören zu den wichtigsten Quellen der Geschichte des Frankenreichs. Sie zeigen die Versuche der karolingischen Herrscher, das durch Karl den Großen erweiterte Großreich regierbar zu machen, und sind für nahezu alle Bereiche der fränkischen Geschichte eine unverzichtbare Grundlage historischer Forschung: Sie informieren über Reformen in Kirche, Gesellschaft und Reich, über die Mechanismen der politischen Krisenbewältigung, über Anspruch und Grenzen herrscherlicher Eingriffe in lokale Strukturen, über die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen politischer Herrschaft und über die Interaktion zwischen den Karolingern und ihren Amtsträgern.

Der erste Band der Neuedition umfasst die Regierungszeit Kaiser Ludwigs des Frommen und enthält die von ihm bzw. von seinem Sohn Lothar erlassenen Kapitularien mit umfassendem Kommentar und deutscher Übersetzung.

More information can be found here.

BOOK: Dirk HEIRBAUT, Redefining Codification. A Comparative History of Civil, Commercial, and Procedural Codes (Oxford: OUP, 2025), 496 p. 9780198947363, 160 GBP

 

(image source: OUP)

Abstract:

More than half of the world's population lives under law codes. Yet, defining the concept of codification remains elusive. Rather than delving into abstract theories, this book provides a rich and contextual comparative legal history of codes in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium from the late eighteenth century to the present. The author starts by examining the evolution of French, German, Dutch, and Belgian codes in their political and comparative context, thus challenging deeply rooted national narratives. He covers the well-studied civil codes and the often-overlooked commercial and procedural codes and drafts that failed to become law. Against this backdrop, the book embarks on a comprehensive analysis of the factors contributing to the success or failure of codification efforts. Employing an innovative method of comparative legal history, Redefining Codification explores the key players and objectives behind codification, revealing that traditional notions of codification are far removed from reality. Following the deconstruction of some 'universal truths' about codifications, this volume offers fresh insights into the behind-the-scenes of the lawmaking machinery and an empirically based definition of codification.

Table of contents:

1:Introduction
2:France
3:Germany
4:The Netherlands
5:Belgium
6:The Lack of an Ideal Code
7:A Comparative Legal History Method for Studying the Success and Failure of Draft Codifications
8:Actors: Drafters, Politicians, and Other Stakeholders
9:Aims: Do Ambitions Survive Contact with Reality?
10:Conclusion: Redefining the Concept of a Code 

On the author:

Dirk Heirbaut is a senior full professor at Ghent University specialized in comparative legal history. His research covers medieval feudal and customary law, the comparative history of private law codifications, and Belgian private law since Napoleon. He is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts and the Academia Europaea and was a founding vice-president of the European Society for Comparative Legal History. He has been a guest researcher and professor at various universities and received the Eike von Repgow Prize in 2014.

Read more here (available from 30 January 2025). 

LECTURE: Charles Walton: "Between Redistribution and Theories of Abundance: Toward a Deep History of Social Rights" (University of Warwick, 26 NOV 2024, 18:00 CET/17:00 GMT, Teams) (ONLINE)

                                   

                             (image source: University of Warwick)

The EUTopia Connected Learning Community Legal History, which unites staff and students as well as external experts around the theme Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History, is delighted to announce the Opening Keynote Lecture for this year, to be given by dr. Charles Walton (University of Warwick) on Tuesday 26 November.

Biography:

Charles Walton is a historian of France and Director of the Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre.  

Link opens in a new window

Before joining the History Department at Warwick, he taught at Yale University, the University of Oklahoma (Norman) and Sciences Po (Paris). His research focuses on Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolutionary France, with emphases on rights, political economy and socio-economic justice.

His prize-winning book, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: the Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (2009, paperback 2011, French translation 2014), explores the themes of honour, speech, public opinion and political violence. It shows how debates over limits to free expression contributed to political radicalisation before and during the Revolution. He has edited a collection of essays in honour of Robert Darnton on print culture and the Enlightenment, Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (2011).

More recently, his research has centred on the history of social rights. He is co-editor (with Steven L. B. Jensen) of Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History (Cambridge, 2022) and editor of a special issue of French History on social rights (2019).

This lecture will be public, on Microsoft Teams. The event starts at 18:00 Brussels Time (17:00 GMT) and will last until 19:30 (18:30 GMT).

RSVP with: frederik.Dhondt@vub.be to confirm your online attendance.