JOURNAL: Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History 33 (2025)

Journal of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. 

The most recent issue of Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History (Rg) opens with an essay in the Research section on multilingualism and law in late antiquity. Hartmut Leppin focuses on Syrian, Coptic and Hebrew sources, showing the rich legal pluralism of the Roman empire and how its openness to diverse languages was part of the decentralisation of the empire, even transcending its borders. Thorsten Keiser uses sources from the late middle ages, the early modern period and the modern era to trace the transformation of labour law from a right to discipline workers into the workers' right to social security. Thomas Weitin and Katharina Herget demonstrate possible applications of Digital Humanities in their study of the criminal cases collection Der Neue Pitaval (1842–1890). The Research section closes with Daniel Siemens’ contribution about the periodical Rechtsprechung zum Wiedergutmachungsrecht (1949–1981) and the tireless work of its editor Walter Schwarz to promote German jurisprudence on reparations. 

The Focus section looks at a central issue of labour law: the normative structures of industrial relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The studies by Peter Collin, Johanna Wolf, Tim-Niklas Vesper and Matthias Ebbertz result from years of research at the Institute into normative labour relationships in the metal industry. This section also contains further contributions by Roman Köster, Eva-Maria Roelevink und Fabian Trinkaus. 

As always, the Critique section covers new publications from the colourful cornucopia of legal history, including: legal pluralism, Chinese legal history, legal history in Latin America, the history of private law, public law, and criminal law. The reviews in this section are authored by researchers at the Institute and from all over the world. This edition of the Rg also premiers a new section: following the Critique, under the heading Comptes rendus, you will find ten short presentations of select publications from members of the Institute. 

This year’s Rg is rounded off by two Marginalia. In the first, Ralf Seinecke asks: Was ist Recht? (What is Law?). In the second, Karla Escobar offers a look, based on the dissertation that she wrote at the Institute and published in Colombia in the form of a Graphic History, at the Indigenous Movement in Colombia around 1900. This graphic novel also provided the material for the image spread in the printed issue of this Rg edition. 

Rechtsgeschichte — Legal History 33 is now available, in print from the VittorioKlostermann publishing house and online in Open Access via the journal’s website.