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30 June 2025

BOOK: Ulrike BABUSIAUX, Christian BALDUS, Wolfgang ERNST, Franz-Stefan MEISSEL, Johannes PLATSCHEK & Thomas RÜFNER (Hrsg.), Handbuch des Römischen Privatrechts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), XCVI + 3707 p., € 629

 

(image source: Mohr Siebeck)

Abstract:

Das Handbuch des Römischen Privatrechts gilt dem römischen Privat- und Zivilprozessrecht von den ältesten römischen Rechtsquellen bis zur Zeit Justinians. Erstmals seit fünfzig Jahren erfolgt eine umfassende Darstellung auf der Höhe des aktuellen Forschungsstandes. Das Werk bietet sachkundige Orientierung angesichts der Vielzahl der Forschungsgegenstände und der stetig reicher werdenden Sekundärliteratur. Es dient auch Althistorikern, Klassischen Philologen, anderen Geisteswissenschaftlern und Vertretern des geltenden Rechts als Nachschlagewerk und erhebt den Anspruch, ein Bezugspunkt der internationalen römisch-rechtlichen Forschung zu sein. Der Schwerpunkt der Darstellung liegt auf der Diskussion der spätrepublikanischen und kaiserzeitlichen römischen Jurisprudenz, wobei eine intensive Bezugnahme auf den Prozess erfolgt. Die juristische Papyrologie und Epigraphik sind ebenso berücksichtigt wie die provinziale Rechtspraxis.

On the editors:

Ulrike Babusiaux ist Professorin für Römisches Recht, Privatrecht und Rechtsvergleichung an der Universität Zürich. Christian Baldus Studium der Rechtswissenschaft in Passau, Pavia und Trier; Referendariat in Koblenz; Promotion und Habilitation in Köln; Professor für Bürgerliches Recht und Römisches Recht in Heidelberg und Direktor am Institut für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4740-0410 Wolfgang Ernst ist Regius Professor of Civil Law an der University of Oxford. Franz-Stefan Meissel ist Professor für Römisches Recht an der Universität Wien. Johannes Platschek ist Professor für Römisches Recht, Antike Rechtsgeschichte und Bürgerliches Recht an der LMU München. Thomas Rüfner ist Professor für Bürgerliches Recht, Römisches Recht, Neuere Privatrechtsgeschichte sowie Deutsches und Internationales Zivilverfahrensrecht an der Universität Trier.

Table of contents:

Band I
1. Abschnitt: Grundlagen
Rechtsentstehung und Rechtsverwirklichung - Überlieferung der Quellen
2. Abschnitt: Zivilprozess und Handlungsformen
Entwicklungsstufen des Zivilprozesses - Handlungsformen im Privatrecht
3. Abschnitt: Personen
Person und Handlungsfähigkeit - Hausverband (familia)
4. Abschnitt: Vermögensrecht (res)
Eigentum und Besitz - Beschränkte dingliche Rechte (iura in re aliena) - Erbschaft und Erbgang

Band II
5. Abschnitt: Rechtsdurchsetzung (actiones)
Dingliche Klagen (actiones in rem - Klagen mit adiudicatio - Persönliche Klagen (actiones in personam): 1. Actio und obligation- 2. Condictiones - 3. Klagen nach Treu und Glauben (bonae fidei iudicia) - 4. Deliktische und quasi-deliktische Klagen - 5. Rechtsschutz für erbrechtliche Ansprüche

Haftung für Gewaltunterworfene - Einreden (exceptiones) und andere Verteidigungsmittel

Authors:

José Luis Alonso, Francisco Javier Andrés Santos, Lorena Atzeri, Ulrike Babusiaux, Ralph Backhaus, Christian Baldus, Federico Battaglia, Hans-Peter Benöhr †, Wolfram Buchwitz, Alfons Bürge, Pierangelo Buongiorno, Riccardo Cardilli, Amelia Castresana Herrero, Maria Floriana Cursi, Wojciech Dajczak, Tommaso dalla Massara, Paul J. du Plessis, Wolfgang Ernst, Iole Fargnoli, Thomas Finkenauer, Birgit Forgó-Feldner, Richard Gamauf, Jean-François Gerkens, Peter Gröschler, Susanne Hähnchen, Verena Halbwachs, Susanne Heinemeyer, Alessandro Hirata, Evelyn Höbenreich, Michel Humbert, Philipp Klausberger, Fabian Klinck, Georg Klingenberg †, Francesca Lamberti, Detlef Liebs, Sebastian Lohsse, Carla Masi Doria, Franz-Stefan Meissel, Ernest Metzger, Andreas Nitsch, Anna Novitskaya, Martin Pennitz, Guido Pfeifer, Pascal Pichonnaz, Peter Pieler †, Johannes Platschek, Anna Plisecka, Johannes Michael Rainer, José-Domingo Rodríguez Martín, Thomas Rüfner, David Rüger, Dietmar Schanbacher, Philipp Scheibelreiter, Philipp Schmieder, Jakob Fortunat Stagl, Emanuele Stolfi, Benedikt Strobel, Mario Varvaro, Tom Walter, Adolfo Wegmann Stockebrand, Constantin Willems, Markus Wimmer, Bénédict Winiger, Bastian Zahn 

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RESOURCE: Bibliography of British and Irish History

 

(image source: BBIH)

Presentation:

The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is a high-quality record of over 660,000 publications relating to British and Irish History. This page helps you get the most from BBIH and shows how to use it in a blended learning environment.

The BBIH is the largest and most comprehensive record of what's been published in British and Irish History, and the British empire -- as well as on histories of migration, gender and race. BBIH has detailed records of over 660,000 books, articles, essays and theses, including thousands that were published this year. Each record has a detailed index to help discoverability. Records also provide links to locate a copy of a book in your Library, or go direct to journal article if your Library subscribes. This makes BBIH the best way to find what's been published, create reading lists, write a literature review, or swiftly identify the different kinds of academic publications used at university. 

Read more here

ADVANCE ARTICLES: Law & History Review [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: Cambridge Core)


The Twentieth-Century Origins of the Medieval Lex Mercatoria Thesis (Jake Dyble)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248025100709
Abstract:

This article reappraises the early intellectual formation of the medieval “lex mercatoria” thesis: the idea that the international merchants of medieval Europe (or perhaps beyond) enjoyed a universal, autonomous, and customary body of commercial law created and administered by themselves. The debate over its existence, raging for at least 120 years, shows no signs of slowing, in part because the idea is of undoubted usefulness to both proponents (so-called “mercatorists”) and critics. The article offers a new account of the origins of this idea and looks to disaggregate different mercatorist conceptions. Revising the conventional genealogy that traces the theory through the work of Berthold Goldman to the nineteenth-century German scholar Levin Goldschmidt, who is much misunderstood in Anglophone scholarship, it argues that the idea’s powerful re-emergence in the second half of the twentieth century was mediated through two distinct channels, one centred around the British-German jurist Clive Schmitthoff and the other around the British historian William Mitchell. The latter yoked Goldschmidt’s emphasis on the medieval merchant class as a source of legal innovation to a thoroughly Anglophone concept: the “law merchant”. Critics, however, have engaged primarily with Schmitthoff’s conception, whose “strong” mercatorist argument was not only unusually forthright but reoriented the debate to focus on commercial law’s supposed autonomy from the law of territorial states, an even less plausible proposition in historical terms.

How Kantian is Kelsen’s Early Theory of International Law? (Wojciech Engelking)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248025100904
Abstract:

In this article, the author examines the influence of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical ideas on Hans Kelsen’s early theory of international law. He situates Kelsen’s work within the post-World War I context, where Kant’s vision of perpetual peace significantly impacted the creation of international organizations. The article delves into Kelsen’s seminal work “Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts,” exploring how Kelsen’s pure theory of law parallels and diverges from Kant’s concepts. While Kelsen’s ideas were shaped by Kantian philosophy, particularly in promoting a lawful international order, Kelsen transcended Kant by developing a more rigorous, epistemologically grounded legal theory. The author argues that Kelsen’s adaptation of Kantian principles reflects both a continuation and transformation of Kant’s vision, tailored to the political and cultural challenges of early 20th-century Europe.

Properties of Empire: Contests over the Commons on Newfoundland's French Shore, 1763–83 (Arianne Sedef Urus)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248024000245
Abstract:

France ceded territorial claims to Newfoundland to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, but French fishermen retained rights to operate seasonal cod fisheries along a stretch of coastline known as the French Shore. The treaty was one of several laws formalizing the property regime based on the commons that emerged among European fishermen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Several demographic and geopolitical changes converged after the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) to raise the question of whether French fishing rights on the French Shore were exclusive or concurrent with British fishing rights on that coast. Treaty and customary law seemed at odds on this question, forcing fishermen, merchants, naval officers, and ministers to articulate what constituted property and how property should be conceived if an interimperial commons were to work. The conflicts that transpired highlighted how they answered these questions differently. Agents of the state tended to promote the commons while some British subjects tried to create a real property regime from below. Disputes over real property formation on the French Shore show another dimension of the early modern enclosure process, demonstrating both the role of the commons in empire and the challenges of resource management in an interimperial space.

British Imperial Constitutional Law and the Zionist Campaign against the Legislative Council in Mandatory Palestine (Maya Kreiner)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248025000070
Abstract:

This article examines the role of British imperial constitutional law in the Zionist campaign against establishing a Legislative Council in Palestine during the early 1930s. At the time, the British government sought to introduce limited self-government in Palestine through a parliamentary institution that would include both locals and British officials. However, the Zionist leadership opposed this initiative, fearing that a representative institution reflecting the country’s demographics would threaten the development of the Jewish National Home. This article explores the Zionist engagement with the British imperial constitutional experience within its campaign against the Legislative Council, emphasizing the strategic application of British constitutional law by two Zionist officials, Leo Kohn and Chaim Arlosoroff. Through this case, the article highlights the influence of British constitutional law on interactions between national movements and the British Empire. It argues that the British imperial system offered an adaptable and flexible political framework. The Zionists’ attentiveness to this flexibility not only sheds light on the interplay between Zionism and the British Empire during the mandatory period but also underscores the place of constitutional flexibility in political debates within the British Empire.

“The Problem Can Be Solved Only by Those Imbued with a Socialist Sense of Justice!”: Social Conflict and the Lower Courts in the German Democratic Republic (Ville Erikkilä & Luisa Gries)
DOI  10.1017/S0738248025000082
Abstract:

The article concentrates on the massive project of popularizing the court system and penal practice in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the 1960s. From then on, the GDR transferred a considerable amount of jurisdiction to collectives, which were further assigned the task of adjudicating “close to the people” within and alongside the existing legal system. We will analyze how the government, with this project, managed to translate the ideological task of sanctioning the inner-state enemy into existing legal concepts and how it used law as a means to advance its political aims. By focusing on the judicialization of politics in the GDR, the article examines the legal history of the GDR as an important example in the broader and pressing phenomenon of the relationship between law and authoritarian politics.

Innovation in the Courts: Ellis and Jeffery Hart Bent in New South Wales—an Analysis of Minute Books (Paula Jane Byrne) 
DOI 10.1017/S0738248024000233
Abstract:

Close reading of documents produced by the early courts in New South Wales show two young men, formerly barristers at the Northern Assizes, innovating in their court rooms. Such innovation derived from their merchant background rather than the traditions of mercy or paternalism of the Assizes. In such innovations colonial agents were empowered and could shape the workings of the courts themselves. Minutes of the court show the impact of new kinds of elites generated by wealth built on slavery on the courts in the colonies and the subsequent flowering of subcultures.

General Will or Public Order? The Debate on Criminal Justice Policy in Early Colonial Himalaya, 1815–1816 (Irit Ballas & Arik Moran)
DOI  10.1017/S0738248025000069
Abstract:

When the British East India Company (EIC) conquered the West Himalaya region in the 1810s, it faced a critical challenge commonly encountered by colonial empires: determining the extent of intervention in intracommunity criminal matters among colonized subjects. This article examines the archived correspondence of colonial officials regarding this challenge and scrutinizes the various arguments made for and against intervention. It shows that the alterity of the subject population was strategically employed by both sides of the debate, who simultaneously promoted contradictory agendas: for those advocating intervention, alterity rendered involvement in criminal matters necessary and just, whereas those averse to intervention employed the very same notion to justify the opposite stance. This dual usage is explained by exposing the contemporary ideas about criminal justice that underlay each of these positions: that criminal law should represent the general will of society, and that it must be executed by a centralized power so as to maintain public order. While these two tenets are commonly perceived as supporting one another, the analysis reveals their decoupling in colonial settings. The debates of EIC officials thus demonstrate how the colonial setting distorts ideas foundational to modern criminal law systems, casting doubt over whether they were ever truly in harmony to begin with.

Read more on Cambridge Core

27 June 2025

SEMINAR: Autour de E. Conte et L. Genton, Lire le droit du Moyen Age, Comprendre et utiliser les sources juridiques (XIIe-XVe siècles) [RHFD] (Guyancourt: Université Versailles-Saint-Quentin, 4 JUL 2025)


Elle est organisée le 4 juillet 2025 en partenariat avec le Laboratoire de Droit des Affaires et Nouvelles Technologies à la  
Faculté de Droit et de Science Politique, 3 rue de la division Leclerc, 78280 Guyancourt

Les échanges feront l’objet d’une captation video et d’une mise en ligne sur le site du DANTE et sur celui de la SHFD.

L’entrée est libre, à la seule condition de s’inscrire en envoyant un courrier à rhfd@univ-droit.fr

(source: RHFD/Pierre Bonin)

26 June 2025

ARTICLE: Mia KORPIOLA & Jørn ØYREHAGEN SUNDE, "The Influence of the Principle "Necessitas Non Habet Legem" on Nordic Medieval Laws on Theft" (Journal of the History of Ideas LXXXV (2024), nr. 4 (Oct), 681-711

 

(image source: UPenn Press)

First paragraph:

The chapter on theft in the Norwegian Code of the Realm, compiled through the initiative of King Magnus VI Lawmender (r. 1263–80) and promulgated by him in 1274, opens by declaring theft unlawful.1 However, the Code goes on to stipulate that larceny would not merit punishment in the case of a starving man who steals food after unsuccessfully seeking gainful [End Page 681] employment.2 The Code of 1274 then prescribes the penalties for petit larceny for first-time offenders who do work to support themselves. Thus, the Code explicitly distinguishes between starving unemployed persons who steal food out of necessity and those who steal despite having access to a livelihood. It was a longstanding and widespread norm, as the Code was drafted for the whole of rural Norway and remained in force well into the seventeenth century. In this article, we consider whether this norm could have been inspired by the canonical maxim necessitas non habet legem (necessity knows no law).

Read the article here: DOI  10.1353/jhi.2024.a944582.

25 June 2025

OPEN ACCESS: Book series "Études d'histoire du droit et des idées politiques" (dir. Florent GARNIER) (Toulouse: Presses de l'Université Toulouse Capitole) [OPENEDITION BOOKS]

 

(image source: Openedition)

Abstract:

The series of “History Studies of Law and Political Ideas” (EHDIP) was created in 1997 by the Toulouse Centre for the History of Law and Political Ideas. The host team develops scientific research in the continuation of a long tradition at the Faculty of Law and Political Science from Toulouse. The treated subjects (justice, political ideas, state, law education and right of the portfolio) are likely to interest a wide audience through the large temporal scope as well as national and European dimension.

Most recent title: Justicia, comercio e instituciones en la carrera de indias (siglo XVI) by Ana Belem Fernandez Castro (2024):

La gestión del monopolio comercial de la corona castellana sobre las Indias dio lugar a lafundación de instituciones especializadas en el comercio que resolvieran sus problemas y procuraran su regulación. En 1503 fue creada la Casa de la Contratación de las Indias, institución que se ocuparía de la coordinación del comercio colonial, funcionando como un tribunal especializado en la resolución de las disputas derivadas de la Carrera de Indias. ¿Pero realmente la audiencia de la Casa de la Contratación contribuyó a resolver los problemas del comercio indiano? Este trabajo busca responder a esa pregunta a través de la semántica de la eficiencia, definiendo si el desempeño jurisdiccional de la audiencia de la Casa de la Contratación reunió las cualidades de las instituciones eficientes. Tales cualidades, trasladadas al plano jurisdiccional suponen que la Casa haya conseguido administrar justicia restaurando el orden económico vulnerado entre los litigantes que frecuentaron el tribunal y garantizando el cumplimiento auténtico de las sentencias. En un contexto de pluralismo legal en el que los mercaderes usaban múltiples jurisdicciones para enfrentar los problemas del comercio, analizar el desempeño jurisdiccional de la Casa de la Contratación supone analizar asimismo el desempeño de las instituciones con las que interactuaba, principalmente el Consejo de Indias, el Consulado de Cargadores a Indias, la Real Audiencia de Sevilla y, en el plano extrajudicial, el arbitraje.
 (DOI 10.4000/12ai3)

Discover the full series here.

 

JOB: PhD candidate legal history (first half of the 20th century), University of Regensburg, Prof. Dr. Martin Löhnig, Chair for Civil Law, German and European Legal History and Canon Law (DEADLINE: 18 July 2025)

File:Die Universität Regensburg + Uniteich.jpg
By High Contrast - Own work, CC BY 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11655231
 
 
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ausgerichtete Campus-Universität mit vielseitigen und hochrenommierten Forschungsaktivitäten
und einem breiten und attraktiven Studienangebot für junge Menschen aus dem In- und Ausland.
Der Lehrstuhl von Martin Löhnig (www.martin-loehnig.de) widmet sich insbesondere der
deutschen und europäischen Rechtsgeschichte des 19./20. Jahrhunderts und der Juristischen
Zeitgeschichte. Dort ist eine Stelle als

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (m/w/d)

 

in Teilzeit (20 Stunden pro Woche) zu besetzen. Die befristete Beschäftigung erfolgt zur eigenen
wissenschaftlichen Qualifizierung (Promotion) für eine angemessene Vertragslaufzeit (§ 2 Abs. 1
WissZeitVG). Die Vergütung erfolgt nach TV-L E13.

Ihre Aufgaben:
 
• Arbeit an Ihrer Dissertation im Rahmen eines rechtsgeschichtlichen
Forschungsprojekts (erste Hälfte 20. Jahrhundert).
• Unterstützung des Lehrstuhlinhabers bei der rechtshistorischen Arbeit.

Unsere Anforderungen:
 
• Interesse an den rechtsgeschichtlichen Arbeitsbereichen des Lehrstuhls.
• Fachliche Eignung gem. § 5 der PromO der Fakultät für Rechtswissenschaft.
• Flexibilität und Teamfähigkeit.

Wir bieten Ihnen:
 
• Exzellentes und wertschätzendes Arbeitsumfeld in einem aufgeschlossenen
Team.
• Anspruchsvolle und abwechslungsreiche Tätigkeit.
• Ausgezeichnete Möglichkeit zur Promotion mit stetiger und strukturierter
Betreuung.
• Einen hohen Grad an Selbständigkeit mit flexiblen Arbeitszeiten.

Die Universität Regensburg strebt eine Erhöhung des Frauenanteils an und fordert daher
qualifizierte Frauen ausdrücklich zur Bewerbung auf. Die Universität Regensburg setzt sich
besonders für die Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf ein (nähere Informationen unter https://
www.uni-regensburg.de/universitaet/personalentwicklung/familien-service).

Bei im Wesentlichen gleicher Eignung werden schwerbehinderte Bewerberinnen und Bewerber
bevorzugt eingestellt. Bitte weisen Sie auf eine vorliegende Schwerbehinderung ggf. bereits in
der Bewerbung hin.

Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an Herrn Prof. Dr. Martin Löhnig
(martin.loehnig@ur.de). Wir freuen uns auf Ihre ausführliche Bewerbung, die
Sie bitte bis zum 18. Juli 2025 per E-Mail an martin.loehnig@ur.de senden.

Hinweise zum Datenschutz finden Sie unter https://www.uni-regensburg.de/assets/universitaet/stellenausschreibungen/dokumente/datenschutz_stellenausschreibungen_2020.pdf
 
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JOURNAL: Special Issue "The Turn to Historiography in International Law" (eds. Thomas KLEINLEIN and Jean d'ASPREMONT) (Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international XXVII (2025), nr. 1)

 

(image source: Brill)

Editorial: Bridging Past and Future. A New Chapter for JHIL (Raphael Schäfer & Inge Van Hulle)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10125

The Turn to Historiography in International Law: Limitations and New Horizons (Thomas Kleinlein & Jean d'Aspremont)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10120
Abstract:
This article, for the sake of introducing the contributions to the special issue that follows, revisits some of the key scholarly controversies that have punctuated the last decades of debates and critiques of the histories of international law. Commonly called the ‘turn to history’, this special issue construes this development rather as a historiographical turn. Particular attention is paid to the kinship between the historiographical turn and postcolonial critiques of international law, the relationship between the historiographical turn and the increased interest in the history of international law scholarship, and the relationship between such historiographical appetite and the idea of presentism. Finally, and before introducing the contributions to this special issue, this essay floats the idea of a post-progressive approach to the history of international law, with a view to creating new spaces for the renewal of the never-ending critique and rewriting of the histories of international law.

The ‘Narrative Turn’ and Its Limits (Felix Lange) 
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10117
Abstract:

This article explores the implications of the ‘narrative turn’ for the history of international law. It refers to the epistemological and methodological debate about narrative elements in historical writing and examines how claims about ‘history as fiction’ have been received in writings on the history of international law. It uses Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of the ‘veto power of sources’ as a means of addressing the ‘narrative turn’ and its implications. As an example, the article points to the methodological flaws of Vladimir Putin’s historical justification of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The Narrative Fragmentation of International Legal History (Ryan Martínez Mitchell)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10121
Abstract:

The historiography of international law is highly pluralistic and resistant to unifying master narratives. This pluralism is reflected in diverging authorial strategies. To categorise such strategies, this article borrows Hayden White’s typology of ‘emplotments’, or narrative logics, as a useful method of classification. As the article shows, leading accounts of international law’s history have often involved conflicting forms of subjective identification with protagonists and forces. This article also suggests that the turn from a relatively homogenous understanding of international legal history to one characterised by inescapable fragmentation can be dated to the geopolitical, ideological, and cultural transitions of the 1950s-60s. Entrenched ideological conflict and decolonization resulted in a stubbornly diverse historiography that remains the essential condition of the field today. For modern historians of international law, it is crucial to recognise this narrative fragmentation as well as the resulting choices it imposes upon authors making sense of the past.

Recovering the Radical Tradition in the International Legal History of Decolonisation (Tor Krever)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10119
Abstract:

Despite growing interest in the international legal history of decolonisation, significant elisions remain. Through a ‘symptomatic reading’ of recent engagements with that history, this article argues that such work contributes to an erasure of the Marxist tradition in the history of the Third World movement. It argues that Marxism and a Marxist theory of imperialism were important influences on anti-colonial political thought and practice, while also shaping radical Third World lawyers’ attitudes towards the relationship between international law and imperialism and the uses and limits of the former in challenging the latter. Against the erasure of this tradition, the article calls for a recovery of silenced histories of radicalism and anti-imperial thought and of a tradition that still offers resources for an emancipatory politics grounded in a critique of international law, imperialism and global capitalism.

Authorial Labour in the Postcolonial Historiography of International Law (Michele Tedeschini)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10118 
Abstract:

The article draws on the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan to offer an alternative reading of three texts that exemplify a postcolonial trend in the historiography of international law. These texts are Antony Anghie’s 2005 Imperialism, Sovereignty, and International Law; Rose Parfitt’s 2019 The Process of International Legal Reproduction; and Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri, and Vasuki Nesiah’s introduction to the 2017 volume Bandung, Global History, and International Law. Disregarding the merits of the historical accounts they offer, the article draws on these text to show (i) that postcolonial historiographers of international law construct their own authorial selves as they reconstruct the past; and (ii) that this procedure, which is informed by desire, turns every (postcolonial) history into a personal history.

Futurism: Neglected Histories of International Law (Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10122
Abstract:

This contribution proposes to unearth, scrutinise, and possibly disrupt futuristic moves in international law. Existing scholarship has demonstrated that the narrative technology of historicisation in international legal scholarship typically adheres to a linear and unidirectional temporality. This sequence, it is argued here, progresses not solely from the past to the present but also extends from the past and present towards the future. This significant step has been overlooked thus far. The article demonstrates that futuristic moves in international law not only fit within the linear and unidirectional approaches to time and international law but are also intimately linked with a celebration of human agency and of international lawyers’ capacity to act upon and fix future crises. Futuristic moves, however, are not solely future-oriented as they might appear. They are, the article shows, a narrative technology to govern the present. This narrative technology, to date, has mainly perpetuated existing power structures and historical modes and modalities of domination and oppression. The article suggests that inspiration is to be found in Afrofuturist movements as a source for counternarratives to disrupt the current use of futurism as a narrative technology of continuity, governance and oppression.

 Book reviews

  • Investment Law’s Alibis: Colonialism, Imperialism, Debt and Development, written by David Schneiderman (Oliver Hailes)
  • Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces?, edited by Immi Tallgren (Aden Knaap)
Read the full issue here.

24 June 2025

IM MEMORIAM: Miloš VEC, Herrscher müssen den Frieden sichern. Zum Tod des Rechtshistorikers Bernhard Diestelkamp (FAZ, 22 JUN 2025)

(image source: Booklooker)
 

First sentence:

Als Rechtshistoriker war Bernhard Diestelkamp ein Pionier. Sein bleibendes Verdienst ist die Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Königsgerichtsbarkeit und des Reichskammergerichts. Nun ist er im Alter von 95 Jahren gestorben.

Read more here

 
 

JOURNAL: Actes du colloque: discours juridiques, genre et histoire (Criminocorpus 27 (2025) [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: openedition)


Interroger le droit et son historiographie au prisme du genre (Prune Decoux & Hélène Duffuler-Vialle)
DOI 10.4000/14075
Abstract:

Apart from a few rare initiatives, the encounter between legal history and gender studies has remained marginal. The ANR-HLJPGenre project has been designed to fill this historiographical gap and bring researchers together: it aims to analyse law through a gender lens, focusing on the study of formal law and legal discourse. Epistemological issues play an important role here, allowing us to challenge the myth of 'axiological neutrality' that still prevails in our discipline. At the same time, the study of different methodological approaches opens up perspectives for the renewal of legal history. It was in this context that the international conference Legal Discourse, Gender and History was held in Douai in 2023. Thanks to the interdisciplinarity and decompartmentalisation of disciplines inherent to gender studies, contributions from law, history, sociology, political science, linguistics and philosophy enriched the discussions. Some of their contributions, reworked and expanded, appear in this issue alongside independent articles on the same theme.

Déconstruire la neutralité axiologique et l’androcentrisme 

Le congé menstruel : entre avancée sociale et biais discriminatoire (Maéva Caron-Thérage)
DOI 10.4000/14076
Abstract:

Menstrual leave is a divisive issue. Whether it's a stigmatising measure, a discriminatory bias, a social advance or a measure to restore professional equality, opinions on this measure oscillate between vice and virtue. It is all the more divisive because it covers different realities. Linguistic precision is essential if this measure is to be a real social advance in the interests of professional equality. The term “menstrual leave” should therefore be replaced by the term “adaptation of the presence, working hours or working conditions of menstruating women due to the constraints associated with menstruation”. There is a risk of discrimination, but this should not obscure the need to address the issue of menstruation-related constraints in the workplace. Raising awareness of this issue and breaking the taboo surrounding menstruation, and women's bodies in general, would make it possible to go beyond the issue of gender equality and work towards a right for human beings by human beings.

Avocates et accusées dans l’ombre virile du prétoire. Biais de genre, agentivité et colonialité sous le protectorat tunisien (Hend Guirat et Florence Renucci)
DOI 10.4000/14077
Abstract:

This article aims to analyse the gender prejudices and biases encountered by women in the justice system – lawyers and defendants – in the virile space of the courtroom, where legal, linguistic, and social "codes" are masculine and those who judge ought to be men. Based on the empirical case of the Tunis criminal court from the turn of the 1910s-20s to the 1940s, we explore the prejudices and biases encountered by female lawyers and defendants either in entering the courtroom or within it during debates and convictions. Our approach treats these prejudices and biases relationally, in articulation with the agency of these women and the context of coloniality.

L’accession des femmes à la magistrature non-professionnelle : Un parcours de combattante entre arguments naturalistes et réalité du terrain. Mise en parallèle des cas belge et français (Mathilde van Ackere)
DOI  10.4000/14079
Abstract:

In Belgium, women acquired the right to be lay judges through the Law of May 15, 1910, regarding labor courts, and the Law of June 13, 1924, concerning commercial courts. In France, they acquired this right respectively through the Law of November 15, 1908, and the Law of December 9, 1931. An analysis of the preparatory works for these laws allows for the construction of a typology of the various arguments raised by the proponents of these legislative projects as well as their opponents. The latter notably put forward naturalistic arguments, relying on a supposed feminine nature and inherently feminine professions. Our study highlights the fact that these arguments come into conflict with on-the-ground realities, as emphasized by proponents of the reforms: the significant number of female workers, employees, and business owners; the presence of women leading major businesses; and the increasing access of women to a growing range of professions and positions.

Parler pour ne rien dire ? Retour sur la controverse ancienne du sexe de l’arbitre (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle) (Claire Bouglé-Le Roux)
DOI  10.4000/14078
Abstract:

Based on the fictional figure of Austreberte, the casuist Jean Pontas, in his Dictionnaire de cas de conscience of 1724, envisages the hypothesis of a woman arbitrating a dispute between two men in conflict. A potentially powerful woman, whose voice would take precedence over male divisions. On this hapax, Pontas examines the arguments in a dispute that has been raging in French legal doctrine since medieval times over the competence of women in arbitration, and the contradictory legal grounds for excluding them as unfit, or, on the contrary, recognising their excellence. This controversy, which the jurist Antoine Loisel echoed in his Institutes coutumières (1607) with the adage: ‘Women have voice and responsibility in court and so receive bets and arbitration’, continued unabated until the dawn of the 20th century. The question of the introduction of women to the bar and the judiciary overshadowed this initial dispute, which prefigured it on a strictly discursive level, but which we propose to examine here from the definitive condemnation of women's arbitration at the dawn of the 17th century to the eve of the French Revolution. At a time when the practice of female arbitration was declining and disappearing under the blows of the jurisprudence of the Parlement de Paris in 1602 and 1603, the motif of ‘the woman arbitrator’ was being used in legal doctrine, as a pretext for describing her qualities and faults. Transposing the women's quarrel from the literary register to legal works, this debate helped to identify a representation of female heroism in the modern era, paving the way for the crystallisation of a claim that would lead to the emergence of women's rights from the French Revolution onwards. The controversy thus fostered the expression of an alternative discourse to those relating to the (in)legal capacity of married women or the exclusion of women from public magistracies, testifying to the heterogeneous positions of French jurists on this sensitive issue.

Histoire du droit et « théorie du gender ». Les approches critiques du genre (Pierre-Anne Forcadet)
DOI 10.4000/1407a
Abstract:

The article aims to confront gender studies with their critics that come from legal historians based upon a so-called “gender theory”. The scientific legitimacy itself is often questioned with accusation of lack of objectivity, but the debate lies essentially around the neo-jusnaturalism of most of the authors defending a symbolical order, that enters in contradiction with modern society and the recent turn in favour of gender studies in french legal history.

Renouveler les méthodes de recherche grâce aux concepts issus des études de genre

Décrypter l’expression linguistique et la représentation textuelle dans les sources du droit (Caroline Laske)
DOI 10.4000/1407b
Abstract:

This paper proposes textual representation as a conceptual tool for researching women’s legal capacity by placing language (both the explicit discourse and the encoded meanings) at the centre of the study. The hypothesis is that a major element of the reality of women’s legal capacity lies in the experience of the attitudes/biases women face, which impose constraints on their capacity to act with legal authority. To achieve an all-round understanding of that reality, there is a need to go beyond the normative framework that can be found in the legal/administrative sources and examine these for the linguistic expression used to regulate women’s legal status and their legal capacity to act.

Le rôle du langage ordinaire dans la subversion du droit, un défi pour l’épistémologie juridique : analyse de processus de renversement et de resignification du droit du mariage (1960-2013) (Elena Mascarenhas) 
DOI 10.4000/1407c
Abstract:

This article explains the mechanisms by which ordinary language subverts positive law in a case study devoted to marriage law between the 1960s and 2013. By comparing the evolution of norms with that of the the vocabulary of unions, it identifies two subversive processes: renversement and resignification. This juridical study feeds its approach with analytical philosophy (Austin) and social philosophy (Wittig, Butler, Haslanger), which enables it to refine the theoretical understanding of the discursive subversion of law and tends to challenge the boundaries of juridicity. At a time when legal language is defined as a specialised language in the image of the law, the legal sciences are invited to think of ordinary language as a source of knowledge about the law, and to draw the consequences for legal epistemology.

Une approche juridique et féministe de la maternité : étude au prisme du genre de De la condition légale de la mère (1890) par Sarmiza Bilcescu (Ophélie Colomb)
DOI  10.4000/1407d
Abstract:

In 1890, Sarmiza Bilcescu (1867-1935) was the first woman in France to be awarded a doctorate in law. A pioneering figure in her field, she remains invisible in legal history research, and more specifically in the history of legal thought. This article aims to bring her writings out of oblivion through an analysis of her thesis De la condition légale de la mère, taking into account gender as a structuring element of her legal discourse. To this end, Sarmiza Bilcescu’s thesis must be seen in the light of the context in which it was written and published. Her subject – maternity in civil law – places her at the crossroads of law and feminism at the end of the nineteenth century. For her, it was also a question of entering the world of law, then closed to women. In this way, her arguments in favor of a moderate reform of the mother’s legal status – against a backdrop of morality, the essentialization of maternity and, of course, civil law, the technique of which she mastered perfectly – become clearer. Her approach to motherhood can thus be understood in the light of a historically situated and embodied discourse: that of a bourgeois woman, pioneer in her field and forced to come to terms with the institution she aspired to conquer.

Genre et discours pénal : la bigamie dans la doctrine juridique européenne de l’époque moderne (XVI-XVIIIe siècle) (Tanguy Le Marc'hadour)
DOI 10.4000/1407e
Abstract:

This study attempts to trace the evolution of European criminal doctrine (Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, France) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in relation to the crime of bigamy, which seemed relevant for a study of legal discourse from a gender perspective. The legal existence of the crime of bigamy, hitherto little studied, depends mainly on doctrinal writings, and the study seeks to identify the differences in the discourse concerning men and women. It shows that the two different criminal qualifications for women and men found in the Roman texts were transformed by doctrine into a single, sexually undifferentiated offence in the modern period, while paradoxically maintaining a gendered apprehension in the degree of repression, in accordance with the expected social roles of women and men.

De maîtresse à domestique. La circonstance aggravante de « vol dans une auberge » au prisme du genre (1799-1815) (Prune Decoux)
DOI  10.4000/1407g
Abstract:

This article examines the concept of theft and, more specifically, one of its aggravating circumstances, theft from an inn. While the law of 16 December 1799 provided for an aggravation of the punishment if the theft was committed by the 'master or mistress of the inn', the penal code of 1810 took up this circumstance, masculinising it by removing the term 'mistress'. A study of the text and the debates reveals the performativity of the language of the law and its role in the gender order: the doctrine points to a ruling that chooses the qualification of 'domestic theft' and makes the wife of an innkeeper a 'servant' rather than a 'mistress' - although there was nothing to prevent this. Under the umbrella of the supposedly universal masculine, women are made invisible and denied the status to which they are not explicitly entitled.

Le divorce de Napoléon par sénatus-consulte, les droits d’une épouse sacrifiés sur l’autel de la nécessité (Ambre Jarassier)
DOI 10.4000/1407f
Abstract:

Inspired by ancient Rome, the Napoleonic senatus-consulte is a legal norm drafted by the conservative Senate under the aegis of Napoleon. This text embodies a norm that is both contra legem and contra constitutionem. The dissolution of the marriage between Napoleon and Josephine was contrary to the articles of the Civil Code concerning divorce by mutual consent. Joséphine's rights were violated. Moreover, the senatus-consulte violated article 14 of the Imperial Constitution of Floréal 28, Year XII, which provided for the establishment of a statute relating to the imperial family. The latter, dated March 30, 1806, prohibits divorce for all members of the imperial family, including the Emperor. Such violations were justified by necessity: the continuity of the Empire depended on the birth of an imperial prince. Joséphine would thus be responsible for the absence of a male heir, according to the Emperor and the Senate. The senatus-consulte, the Emperor's political weapon, crossed a new threshold with Napoleon's divorce. Whereas this senatorial norm had hitherto been used in the context of public law to further the Emperor's designs, it now came to regulate private law and provoke Empress Josephine's vulnerability.

Surveiller les femmes incarcérées en maison centrale. La construction d’une différenciation de la surveillance pénitentiaire au XIXe siècle (Amélie Imbert et Anne Jennequin)
DOI 10.4000/1407h
Abstract:

This article challenges the androcentric perspective that has historically and currently dominated representations of prisons, focusing on the issue of the surveillance of female prisoners in the 19th century. In France, during the July Monarchy, a prison policy aimed at segregating inmates by sex established the principle that female convicts in central detention and correctional facilities should be supervised by individuals of the same sex. The Sisters’ Service Regulations of 22 May 1841 helped to achieve this, by establishing the involvement of specific staff, namely nuns. These regulations contributed to the creation of a specific organisation for women's prisons, reconfiguring the function of surveillance by distinguishing it from that performed by guards in men’s prisons. This article sheds light on the specific nature of the role assigned to these nuns, highlighting that the conditions for a special 'prison education' for female prisoners were established on religious grounds. The introduction of differentiated prison supervision for men and women had a lasting impact on the organisation of penal institutions and their staffing.

Surveiller les femmes incarcérées en maison centrale. La construction d’une différenciation de la surveillance pénitentiaire au XIXe siècle (Amélie Imbert & Anne Jennequin)
DOI  10.4000/1407h
Abstract:

This article challenges the androcentric perspective that has historically and currently dominated representations of prisons, focusing on the issue of the surveillance of female prisoners in the 19th century. In France, during the July Monarchy, a prison policy aimed at segregating inmates by sex established the principle that female convicts in central detention and correctional facilities should be supervised by individuals of the same sex. The Sisters’ Service Regulations of 22 May 1841 helped to achieve this, by establishing the involvement of specific staff, namely nuns. These regulations contributed to the creation of a specific organisation for women's prisons, reconfiguring the function of surveillance by distinguishing it from that performed by guards in men’s prisons. This article sheds light on the specific nature of the role assigned to these nuns, highlighting that the conditions for a special 'prison education' for female prisoners were established on religious grounds. The introduction of differentiated prison supervision for men and women had a lasting impact on the organisation of penal institutions and their staffing.

Éradiquer l’homosexualité en prison. Le fondement hétéronormatif de l’encellulement individuel  (Quentin Markarian)
DOI 10.4000/1407j
Abstract:

The principle of cell imprisonment was introduced into French law on the 5th of June 1875. Inextricably linked to the nineteenth century reform of the penitentiary system, this model of imprisonment aimed to replace collective dormitories with individual cells. From the Restoration to the Third Republic, this shift in regime was supported for its ability to eradicate homosexuality in prison. The sexual obsession and panic provoked by the “capital vice of communal dormitories” are especially evident in the writings of penal science, government inquiries, as well as parliamentary works and debates that gave rise to the law of June 5, 1875. Historically built on a heteronormative discourse, the cell remains a legal and architectural pillar of contemporary penal prisons.

Esquisse d’une approche intersectionnelle de la loi du 15 mars 2004 sur le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics (Marc Thérage)
DOI 10.4000/1407i
Abstract:

The law of 15 March 2004 on the wearing of signs or outfits demonstrating a religious affiliation in public primary and secondary schools is presented by the legislator as a simple application of the principle of secularism. The title of the law only mentions the principle of secularism while parliamentarians insist during debates on gender equality, affirming that this text has the main target – if not the only one – of prohibiting wearing a headscarf in public primary and secondary schools. Since 2004, gender and the supposed religion of racialised women thus appear curiously linked. Drawing on the intersectional approach of Kimberley Crenshaw, enlarged by postcolonial studies, this critique of the 2004 law – presented as « against Muslim headscarves » – and of the discourses surrounding it, makes it possible to underline the existence of a legal discrimination against women of color who live a specific discriminatory experience based on gender, skin colour and/or real or supposed religion, an imaginary split within nationals by distinguishing those who have parents or grandparents who immigrated to France from former colonised territories, age, social condition and/or place of residence as evidence of original social background … The apparent neutrality of the text of the 2004 law conceals a combination of discriminatory factors. This text, both racist and antifeminist, consecrates a white and male subjectivity, yet presented as non-racial, non-gendered and objective.

Discours écoféministes et droit de l'environnement : chassez le naturel ? (Romain Gosse)
DOI  10.4000/1407k
Abstract:

Ecofeminist thoughts have emerged during the seventies, aiming at highlighting the joint domination on feminine gender and nature. Yet, developping at the same time, modern environmental law does not seem to have been influenced by these ideas. Also, contrary to the anglophone legal academic field, the french doctrine has not adressed this crossing – though ecofeminism has been generating a renewed interest over the last few years. Thus, this contribution would propose a few trails of possible convergence between some ecofeminist discourses and some distinctive features or trends of environmental law, which also show potential criticisms against this area of law.

L’influence éparse de l’approche féministe sur la réforme du droit international des investissements (Sanae Boyayachen)
DOI  10.4000/1407l
Abstract:

Faced with feminist demands which are developing a new approach to law, a restructuring taking into account feminism takes on particular meaning in the reforms of various sectors and in particular the overhaul of international investment law. Our article will attempt to analyze the emerging foundations of a feminist perspective on international investment law aimed at reforming the framework of the legal system of international investments. In this regard, our contribution will analyze the reform of international investment law through the prism of the feminist approach and will explain its issues and its orientations in all the strata of a reforming turn via a legal culture propagated by a heterogeneity of apprehension of the gender approach.

Read the whole journal in open access here: DOI 10.4000/1407m.





 


 

 

ESCLH CONFERENCE: 8th Biennial Conference - Back to the Past and Building the Future (Szeged: Unviversity of Szeged, 2-4 JUL 2025)


The eighth biennial conference of the European Society for Comparative Legal History will commence in exactly one week at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the University of Szeged. Dr. Norbert Varga and his team will host more than thirty panels, welcome two keynote speakers, and organize a PhD workshop for early career researchers

The full schedule as well as practical guidelines can be found on the organizer's website. The organisation has dedicated a special page to travel arrangements.


23 June 2025

BOOK: Joanna KULAWIAK-CYRANKOWSKA, "Utilitas" in Roman Jurists' Legal Interpretation [Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge, eds. Elisabeth BEGEMANN, Filippo CARLA-UHINK & Katharina WESSELMANN; 88 ] (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2025), 262 p. ISBN 9783515136686, €52

 

(image source: Franz Steiner Verlag)

Abstract:

This study offers a comprehensive analysis of utilitas, a central concept in Roman law, and its pivotal role in shaping legal interpretation. Moving beyond its traditional view as a merely pragmatic tool, utilitas is shown to guide legal outcomes that not only address practical needs but also align with broader ethical values of righteousness and justice. It argues that a complete understanding of utilitas in legal reasoning – both in meaning and function – can only be achieved by synthesizing jurisprudential, philosophical, and rhetorical perspectives. Through this interdisciplinary lens the book demonstrates that decisions made utilitatis causa, exceptional in their departure from established legal rules, can only be fully understood through the lens of rhetorical theory of legal interpretation, offering a framework that transcends the limitations of literal interpretation. Contributing to ongoing scholarly discourse in Roman law, legal theory, and philosophy, this study provides fresh insights into a concept that remains central to contemporary discussions of legal interpretation and justice.

On the author:

 Joanna Kulawiak-Cyrankowska is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Roman Law at the University of Lodz, Poland, where she teaches Roman Law and Latin. She holds a doctorate in Law and a Master's degree in Classical Philology. Currently, Kulawiak-Cyrankowska is the principal investigator of the Polish National Science Centre-funded project „In a Distorting Mirror? Law as Presented in Roman Satire“. She is also a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bamberg, Germany, contributing to the ERC Consolidator Grant-funded project „Understanding Late Antique Top-Down Communication: A Study of Imperial Constitutions (AntCoCo)“.

Read more here

20 June 2025

BOOK: Christopher ADAIR-TOTEFF, Dictatorial Power and States of Exception in the Weimar Republic: The Controversial Article 48, 1919-1933 [Routledge Research in Legal History] (London: Routledge, 2025), 202 p. ISBN 9781032320823, 116 GBP

 

(image source: Routledge)

Abstract:

This book is an account of the tension between the need for order and the desire for freedom during the tense years of the Weimar Republic. It explains how various groups interpreted Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and utilized it to reinstate peace and tranquility. While Article 48 is usually associated with the so-called “Preußenschlag”—the taking over of the Prussian government by the order of Reich Chancelor Kurt von Papen—it had been introduced as a necessity during earlier “states of emergency”. This investigation delves into the relevant works by many of the leading constitutional scholars in Germany. This list includes Hugo Preuss, Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, Gerhard Anschütz, Richard Thoma, Erwin Jacobi, Hans Nawiasky, and Richard Grau. This book is a clearly written and detailed account of the history surrounding this debate about the appropriate emergency measures to be taken under Article 48. The work is important for its historical interest, and also because the conflict between authority and freedom has continuing relevance. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and academics working in the areas of Legal History, Legal Philosophy, Legal Theory, Constitutional History, and German Studies.

Table of contents:

1 Dictatorship, States of Exception, and Art. 48; 2 1918-1919: The Years of Struggle and Renewal; 31920-1922: The Years of Political and Economic Turmoil; 41923-1926: The Years of Despair and Hope; 5 1927-1929: The Years of Peace and Panic; 6 1930-1933: The Years of Debate and Debacle; 7 Art. 48: Concluding Comments 

On the author:

Christopher Adair-Toteff is a philosopher and a social theorist whose research has been in social economics and in political liberalism. He is a Fellow at the Center for Social and Political Thought, University of South Florida, USA. 

JOURNAL: Pro Memorie. Bijdragen tot de Rechtsgeschiedenis der Nederlanden XXVII (2025), nr. 1 (Jun)

 


Redactioneel (Bram Van Hofstraeten & Paul Brood)

Een alfazoon over archieven en eendenkooien Rechtshistorici uit de Lage Landen (18) (Eddy Put & Louis Sicking)
DOI 10.5117/PROM2025.1.002.PUT
Abstract:
Educated as a lawyer and legal historian, Eric Ketelaar received his LLM (1967) and LLD (cum laude) degrees from Leiden University. His previous functions were Assistant Lecturer of Legal History at Leiden University, Secretary of the Archives Council, Director of the Dutch State School of Archivists, and Assistant to the General State Archivist. He was General State Archivist (National Archivist) of the Netherlands from 1989-1997. Eric Ketelaar was 1992-2002 part-time Professor of Archivistics in the Department of History of the University of Leiden. He wrote some 400 articles in Dutch, English, French and German (some of which were translated into other languages) and he wrote or co-authored several books.
Misdaad en straf aan het Hof van Friesland (1692-1698). Een digitale verkenning met Atlas.ti en QGIS (Hylkje de jong & Jorien Kamminga)
DOI: 10.5117/PROM2025.1.003.JONG
Abstract:
The article examines a digitized criminal sentence book (1692-1698) of the Court of Friesland, assessing the effectiveness of digital tools such as Atlas.ti and QGIS in the analysis of large datasets. The sentence book serves as a test case in this analysis. The study identifies patterns in the number of defendants, their geographical origins, the nature of the crimes, the convictions and the punishments imposed, including banishment and the death penalty. Atlas.ti demonstrates clear advantages by allowing for the automated organization and quantification of data, although early modern texts still pose challenges due to spelling variation. Nonetheless, its potential becomes evident when standardized codes are applied. QGIS proved especially useful in visualizing the geographical origins of defendants, enabling analysis by gender and type of offense through layered maps. This case study underscores the enduring relevance of legal historical research, even in the age of digital tools.
Het Nederlanderschap en de inheemsen in Nederlands-Indië Artikel 5 BW 1838, de Nationaliteitswet 1850 en het amendement Levysohn Norman – een schrijnend onrecht? (Boudewijn Sirks)
DOI 10.5117/PROM2025.1.004.SIRK
Abstract:
The text of art. 5 par. 1 sub 1 of the Civil Code 1838 was confusing. Deviating from earlier drafts in 1822 it read that people, born from parents established in the colonies, were Dutch. Leaving aside that all read this as only applying to those who had moved their domicile to the Netherlands (the Civil Code did not apply in the colonies), and that this only regarded private law rights, granted by the Civil Code, it still suggested that not only Europeans but also the natives of the colonies born there, particularly in the East Indies, were entitled. That became a question in 1850 when the Nationality Bill was discussed in the Parliament. Where the Civil Code had defined nationality for the private law, the Bill aimed at defining nationality in public and international law. Did the possibility of private law nationality suffice to incorporate all natives in the new public law nationality? The minister was against and they stayed out. In the Act on Dutch nationality of 1892, meant to supplant the two co-existing definitions of nationality, originally those with the possibility of private law nationality ex the Civil Code had been included in the unified nationality. Yet, in the nick of time an amendment took the natives of the East Indies out. As a result the act should have been adapted to this change but it did not and now the natives of the East Indies became foreigners. In 1910 this was remedied by an act which declared they were Dutch subjects (and thus not foreigners). However, they had always been and remained subjects. The final question is: were the natives unjustly treated? Only if they had ever expressed the wish for this. But the entire discussion was held without them and moreover, they always wanted to be independent, not Dutch.

Onderhandelen over betalingsproblemen in de handelsrechtbank. Het concordat préventif in Antwerpen (circa 1880-1914) (Dave De ruysscher & Pieter De Reu)
DOI 10.5117/PROM2025.1.005.RUYS
Abstract:
This article explores the dynamics of court practice with regard to mercantile pre-insolvency in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Belgium. In 1883, the Belgian legislature introduced the proceeding of concordat préventif, making it possible for insolvent entrepreneurs to remain outside the liquidation-oriented procedure of faillite. Instead, they could declare their financial problems and propose a scheme of payment to their creditors. In spite of this goal, however, the 1883 law, along with subsequent laws of 1885 and 1887, imposed high majority voting requirements. Accordingly, in the Antwerp commercial court, the shortcomings of the legislation were amended to ameliorate its procedural and judicial practice. The new practices of the court resulted in higher rates of acceptance of applications. However, these success ratios were not evenly distributed among the groups of debtors who applied. Perceptions shared by both creditors and judges may have advantaged merchants, brokers and entrepreneurs who belonged to the higher strata of the city’s business world.

René Magrittes ‘Les jours gigantesques’. Un féministe avant la lettre? (Candice Dalino)
DOI 10.5117/PROM2025.1.006.DALI
Abstract:

Can art provide a force to social reflection and shaping, that abstract laws and policy-making cannot reach? René Magritte (1898-1967), Belgian surrealist painter, touches upon the driving force towards a more equal society with his exploration of (gender-based) violence and sexuality. Les jours gigantesques (1928) depicts a scene of sexual abuse: a man with invisible face attempts to unwittingly overpower a naked woman. It forms a particularly dark, disturbing, and frightening image that causes a shock to the viewer. Magritte confronts the viewer with the societal position of (Belgian) women during the Interbellum: victim of not merely brutal shocking violence, but of a broader inequality that is deeply rooted in our society. This article explores how Magritte’s oeuvre is a carrier of an intrinsic force that directly causes an action (shock) in the viewers’ sphere and brings them to a higher consciousness. An analysis of Les jours gigantesques and related works unveils how René Magritte wields this shock to a higher consciousness towards the (surrealist) image of women as sexual, subordinate objects of lust. The artist’s intention to generate a greater social consciousness of (formal) equality between men and women, situated within the prevailing patriarchal zeitgeist in 1928, leads this article to see Magritte as ‘un féministe avant la lettre’.

Book reviews

  •  Een leeuw in de diplomatie (Paul Brood & Gerard van Krieken)
Read more here.




19 June 2025

BOOK: Anna MACHNIKOWSKA, Michał Karol GALEDEK & Rafał MANKO (eds.), Ideology and Private Law: Polish Experiences in the Long 20th Century [Legal History Library, eds. Dirk HEIRBAUT, Michelle McKINLEY, Matthew C. MIROW & C.H. VAN RHEE, 74] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2025), ISBN 978-90-04-72999-5, € 178,08

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

This book highlights the ideological aspects influencing the modern shape of private law in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), examining Poland as a representative example given the shared historical trajectory of the 20th century across this region. In the historico-legal literature currently in international circulation, there is a dearth of studies on the development of modern positive law in CEE countries. This volume therefore aims to bridge this gap and deliver a more profound reflection on the long-term social, economic, and political role of private law in this region. 

On the editors:

Anna Machnikowska, Dr.iur. (2000), Dr.habil.iur. (2011), is Professor at the University of Gdańsk and Chair of the Department of Civil Procedure. She specialises in property law, justice systems, and political doctrine in the twentieth century. Michał Gałędek, Dr.iur. (2010), Dr.habil.iur. (2018), is Professor and Chair of the Department of Legal History at the University of Gdańsk, and Vice-President for Science at the Polish Society for Legal History. His most recent monograph is National Tradition or Western Pattern: Concepts of New Administrative System for the Congress Kingdom of Poland (1814–1815) (Brill, 2021). Rafał Mańko, Dr.iur. (2014), Dr. habil.iur. (2019), is Research Affiliate at the Central Eastern European University Democracy Institute. His main areas of research are legal survivals, the theory of adjudication, and Central European legal identity.

Read more here: DOI 10.1163/9789004730021.

BOOK: IUSTINIANUS, Corpus Iuris Civilis (transl. Dominique GAURIER) (Paris: La Mémoire du Droit, 2025), 5368 p., € 1980

(image source: La Mémoire du Droit)


 Pour la première fois depuis plus de deux siècles, le Corpus Juris Civilis – fondement du droit occidental – bénéficie d’une traduction française intégrale entièrement renouvelée.

Grace à Dominique Gaurier, maître de conférences, et éminent spécialiste de droit romain et de culture juridique antique, cette édition représente bien plus qu’une simple mise à jour :

➡️ Elle restitue avec rigueur philologique et exigence doctrinale la pensée juridique romaine dans un français contemporain, accessible sans être appauvri.

➡️ Elle propose un appareil critique actualisé, ancré dans l’état le plus récent de la recherche sur les sources, les contextes historiques et l’interprétation juridique.

➡️ Elle s’adresse aussi bien aux juristes, historiens, enseignants et chercheurs, qu’aux étudiants et lecteurs cultivés soucieux de comprendre les racines de notre droit.
 

Cette traduction permet enfin de lire Justinien – et les jurisconsultes qui le précèdent – sans filtre littéraire obsolète, sans archaïsmes, sans effets de style surannés.

Elle rétablit l’intelligence du texte originel, sa rigueur interne, et son actualité dans la formation de la pensée juridique moderne.

Une œuvre de référence. Une entreprise intellectuelle majeure.

Un classique, redevenu accessible et lisible

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18 June 2025

CALL FOR PAPERS: Junior colloquium "Invisible Actors in the Making of International Law (1750-2000)" (Paris: Sciences Po/Center for History, 27-28 NOV 2025) [DEADLINE 10 AUG 2025]

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Colloque junior, CHSP, Sciences Po Paris, 27-28 November 2025

Abstracts submission deadline: 10 August 2025
Contact: invisibleactors2025@gmail.com
Co-funded by Sciences Po School of Research and the Centre for History and Economics in Paris.

Organising committee: Clarisse ANCEAU (École de Droit SciencesPo); Lorenzo BONOMELLI (CHSP/SSM Naples); Amina HASSANI (École de Droit SciencesPo/Geneva); Conor MULLER (Oxford/CHSP); Giovanni ROGGIA (CHSP/Univ. Roma Tre).

Scientific committee : Daniela Luigia CAGLIOTI (Univ. Federico II Napoli); Jean D’ASPREMONT (École de droit Sciences Po/Manchester); Renaud MORIEUX (Cambridge); Horatia MUIR WATT (École de droit Sciences Po); Paul André ROSENTAL (CHSP); David TODD (CHSP-CHEP); Dina WAKED (École de droit/École de la recherche Sciences Po).

Duration: 1.5 days (one afternoon and one full day)
Participants: 9–12 PhD candidates and early career scholars

Proposal

We invite submissions for a conference exploring the role of invisible actors in the making and the transformation of international law from the mid-eighteenth to the twentieth century.

By invisible actors, we refer to individuals, groups and non-human agents (Latour, 2005) that have remained absent from dominant research frameworks within historical and international legal scholarship and who do not appear – or appear only tangentially – in the sources traditionally used by historians of international law such as treaties, state papers, and legal literature. The aim is to contribute to the writing of new histories and genealogies of international law by shifting the focus toward those whose roles have been marginalised or neglected in existing narratives. Participants are invited to explore the role of actors and stakeholders at all levels, from individuals, transnational movements, and interest groups to corporations and non-governmental bodies. 

By making international law, we mean a broad understanding that goes beyond the formal adoption of legal norms. It encompasses practices, and interpretations, but also moments when international law is invoked, applied and thereby continuously (re)produced.

We seek contributions examining how these actors established and challenged norms, customs, and institutions. Submissions should adopt a historical perspective, situating these transformations within their broader historical context. They are expected to examine the causes and consequences of these changes, their interactions with wider historical phenomena, and the continuities and ruptures they reveal in relation to earlier and later developments. 

By combining and encouraging dialogue, connections, and comparisons between historical and other social scientific approaches, we aim to historicise the making of international law. Submissions from specialists and non-specialists in law and legal history alike are equally welcome. 

Scope and objectives

In the last decades, the study of international law has transcended state-centric approaches and legal formalism, incorporating a variety of new actors, spaces, and topics (Fassbender and Peters 2012; Becker Lorca 2015; Herzog 2018). This conference expands on these approaches by bringing into view invisible actors and their contributions to the making of international law.

Therefore, we will focus on the epoch between the middle of the eighteenth century and the end of the twentieth, a period characterised by growing interconnectedness and radical political and economic change. The event will examine how actors operating at different scales and spaces – from the local to the global – interacted to shape norms, practices, and customs into law (Benton 2001; Dezalay 2025; Hespanha 2025). As such, papers might explore the formal and informal ordering of exchanges, movements, and relationships into overarching systems of rule, negotiation, and coercion across and between legal jurisdictions (Benton and Ford 2016; Morieux and Mulich 2024). 

Themes and topics

The historical development of international law will be investigated through the contributions of individuals, groups, and non-human agents, including – but not limited to – organisations, such as NGOs, trade unions, professional associations, corporations, as well as communities, economic and financial actors, and minorities, but also elements of nature and (im)material objects.

We will explore the regulatory frameworks that have emerged to manage connections and flows across and within borders. How and why did actors participate in regulating – or not regulating – these exchanges? And how did their practices impact regional and global orders?

We welcome contributions addressing the following thematic areas:

  • Migrant people, human mobilities, and the transformations of international law
  • The role of groups, minorities, and communities within and across states in shaping legal practices and institutions
  • The agency and role of local and indigenous actors within and against imperial orders
  • The plurality of economic actors and business organisations, their transformations through time, and their impact on international law
  • New actors, the evolution of warfare, and the changing law of war
  • Non-human agents, elements of nature and (im)material objects in the making of international law


We also encourage submissions on subjects not directly included in these thematic areas, but which engage with the general topic and questions of the conference. 

Methodological framework

Presenters should contribute to the conference’s interdisciplinary approach, drawing from and sharing their expertise in diverse fields such as history, law, international relations, and political science. Participants may employ a variety of methodologies, including case studies, comparative and connected analyses, and theoretical reflections. The convenors will be particularly keen to host papers presenting unexplored bodies of primary sources, or that investigate traditional sources of international legal history from new angles. Contributions that connect different scales of analysis, including the local and regional as well as the national, imperial, and global, are especially welcome. Panels will be formed thematically but will include speakers from a mixture of disciplines, and participants should be prepared to discuss their particular methodology, sources, and approach to their topic in relation to those developed and deployed by other speakers.

Submission guidelines

This conference is specifically designed to provide a platform for PhD candidates and early career scholars to share their research, receive feedback, and engage in meaningful dialogue with peers and senior academics.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted by 10th August. Please include a title, your name, institutional affiliation, contact information, and a short bio. Submissions should be sent to invisibleactors2025@gmail.com.

Selected participants will be notified by 20th September and will be asked to send a short paper (no more than 2,500 words, excluding bibliographical references) by 7th November. All papers will be pre-circulated internally among the participants to encourage discussion.

Each participant will have 15 minutes to present their paper. Each panel, consisting of three or four participants each addressing a related issue or time period, will allow substantial time for debate with two discussants (established scholars in the fields of history and law) and the audience.

The conference will be held in English.

Selected participants will be invited to seek funding from their own institutions to cover travel and accommodation expenses. Depending on the funding available, the organisers may be able to partially contribute to the expenses of participants who have no other sources of support. There will be no registration or participation fees for the conference.

A publication collecting the contributions to the conference is envisaged.

Works cited

Becker Lorca, Arnulf. 2015. Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Benton, Lauren. 2001. Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Benton, Lauren, and Lisa Ford. 2016. Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850. Cambridge-London: Harvard University Press.

Dezalay, Sara. 2025. Lawyering Imperial Encounters: Negotiating Africa’s Relationship with the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fassbender, Bardo, and Anne Peters. eds. 2012. The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Herzog, Tamar. 2018. A Short History of European Law: The Last Two and a Half Millennia. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Hespanha, António Manuel. 2025. Filhos da Terra. Mestizos Identities at the Margins of Portuguese Imperial Expansion. Leiden: Brill.

Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morieux, Renaud, and Jeppe Mulich. eds. 2024. ‘Ordering the Oceans, Ordering the World’. Past & Present 265, supplement 17 (special issue).

(source: International Law Reporter)