Legal History Seminar

This book defends the claim that politics is a linguistically constituted activity and shows that the concepts which inform political beliefs and behaviour undergo changes related to real political events. Having set out and discussed this theme, the editors and contributors go on to analyse the evolution of thirteen particular concepts, all central to political discourse in the western world. They include revolution, rights, democracy, property, corruption, public interest, public opinion, and ideology.

The second edition of this text introduces a wide range of traditions in sociology and the humanities that offer provocative, contextual views on law and legal institutions.The book is organised into six sections on classical sociology of law, systems theory, critical approaches, law in action, postmodernism, and law in global society.

In this collection of essays, leading legal historians address significant topics in the history of judges and judging, with comparisons not only between British, American and Commonwealth experience, but also with the judiciary in civil law countries. Contributors describe and analyse aspects of judicial activity, in the widest possible legal and social contexts, across two millennia. The essays cover English common law, continental customary law and ius commune, and aspects of the common law system in the British Empire. The volume is a selection of the best papers from the 18th British Legal History Conference.

For any reader needing a concise explanation of a subject in law The New Oxford Companion to Law is the ideal reference work. Providing greater depth than legal dictionaries but always accessible to the non-expert, entries in the Companion cover all areas of law and legal systems and are extensively cross-referenced for ease of navigation.

The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research provides a comprehensive guide to one of the most central developments in modern legal scholarship. 43 chapters trace the development of the field, its methodology, and its contribution to understanding every aspect of the modern legal world - from policing to finance, employment to the environment.

Authors Costa and Zolo share the conviction that a proper understanding of the rule of law today requires reference to a global problematic horizon. This book offers some relevant guides for orienting the reader through a political and legal debate where the rule of law (and the doctrine of human rights) is a concept both controversial and significant at the national and international levels.

Based on lectures delivered at the University of Michigan, Mar. 12-18, 1959, under the title: Judges: oracles of the law.

Legal Traditions of the World offers a new means of conceptualizing law and legal relations across the world. National laws are placed in the broader context of major legal traditions, those of chthonic (or indigenous) law, talmudic law, civil law, islamic law, common law, hindu law and confucian law. Each tradition is examined in terms of its institutions and substantive law, its founding concepts and methods, its attitude towards the concept of change and its teaching on relations with other traditions and peoples. Legal traditions are explained in terms of multivalent and non-conflictual forms of logic and thought.

What can 'globalisation' teach us about law in the Western tradition? This book seeks to explore that question by analyzing key ideas and events in the Western legal tradition, including the Papal Revolution, the Protestant Reformations and the Enlightenment. Addressing the role of law, morality and politics, it looks at the creation of orders which offer the possibility for global harmony, in particular the United Nations and the European Union. It also considers the unification of international commercial laws in the attempt to understand Western law in a time of accelerating cultural interconnections.

Sixty-four leading legal historians ruminate on their own approaches to teaching legal history in nearly a third of the American law schools: what they teach, why they teach as they do, how they structure their courses, and what they expect their students and themselves to take away from the study of legal history. The contributions are full of inspiration, creative imagination and resourcefulness, self-criticism, insight, and a shared conviction of the importance of a knowledge of legal history for the future of the law teacher and the legal practitioner.

The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History is a comprehensive, international, interdisciplinary reference work that includes approximately 1,000 articles on all aspects of legal history throughout the world from ancient to modern times. Articles deal with private law, public law, and constitutional/higher law throughout the world; each article is signed by one of the set's many noteworthy contributors, which include major scholars and experts.

Outlines the development of legal theory from pre-Roman times to the twentieth century. It aims to relate the evolution of legal theory to parallel developments in political history, and accordingly offers the reader an account of relevant contemporaneous political, religious, and economic events. Each chapter commences with a general historical background for the relevant period, and discusses how political events and political and legal theory are both related to one another and occasionally influence one another.

The thesis of this original and provocative book is that representative government should be understood as a combination of democratic and undemocratic, aristocratic elements. Professor Manin challenges the conventional view that representative democracy is no more than an indirect form of government by the people, in which citizens elect representatives only because they cannot assemble and govern in person. The argument is developed by examining the historical moments when the present institutional arrangements were chosen from among the then available alternatives.

The 33 chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, written by 47 of the most distinguished legislative scholars, provide a comprehensive and up-to-date description and assessment of the state of the art in legislative studies. Key themes explored include theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches to the study of legislatures, representation and legislative careers, internal organization, the role of parties within legislatures and the role of legislatures in policy making and accountability. The Handbook also explores the emergence of parliaments in historical and contemporary contexts, including new democracies and trans-national institutions.

Drawing together leading legal historians from a range of jurisdictions and cultures, this collection of essays addresses the fundamental methodological underpinning of legal history research. Via a broad chronological span and a wide range of topics, the contributors explore the approaches, methods and sources that together form the basis of their research and shed light on the complexities of researching into the history of the law. By exploring the challenges posed by visual, unwritten and quasi-legal sources, the difficulties posed by traditional archival material and the novelty of exploring the development of legal culture and comparative perspectives, the book reveals the richness and dynamism of legal history research.

This comprehensive treatment of legal philosophy and general jurisprudence is designed for jurists as well as legal and practical philosophers. The treatise is presented in two sections: The 5-volume Theoretical part (2005) covers topics of contemporary debate; The 6-volume Historical part (2006-2007) traces the development of legal thought from ancient Greece through the twentieth century. This release incorporates Vol. 6: A History of the Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the Scholastics; Vol. 7: The Jurists' Philosophy of Law from Rome to the Seventeenth Century; and Vol 8: A History of the Philosophy of Law in the Common Law World, 1600-1900.

The study of political institutions is among the founding pillars of political science. With the rise of the 'new institutionalism', the study of institutions has returned to its place in the sun. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of where we are in the study of political institutions, covering both the traditional concerns of political science with constitutions, federalism and bureaucracy and more recent interest in theory and the constructed nature of institutions.

This detailed analysis of the content and configuration of civil codes in diverse jurisdictions also examines their relationship with some branches of private law as: family law, commercial law, consumer law and private international law. It analyzes the codification, decodification and recodification processes illuminating the dialogue between current codes - and private law legislation in general - with Constitutions and International Conventions. The commentary elucidates the changing requirements of civil law as it shifted from an early protection of patrimony to a support for commercial and contractual law. It also explains the varying trajectories of civil law, which in some jurisdictions was merged with religious legal tenets in its codification of familial relations, while in others it was fused with commercial law or, indeed, codified from scratch as a discrete legal corpus. Elsewhere, the volume provides material on differing approaches to consumer law, where relevant legislation may be scattered across numerous statutes, and also on private international law, a topic of increasing relevance in a world where business corporations have interests in multiple jurisdictions (and often play one off against another).

The idea of legal rights today enjoys virtually universal appeal, yet all too often the meaning and significance of rights are poorly understood. The purpose of this volume is to clarify the subject of legal rights by drawing on both historical and philosophical legal scholarship to bridge the gap between these two genres. Legal Rights: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives shows that the meaning and extent of rights has been dramatically expanded in this century, though along with the widespread and flourishing popularity of rights, voices of criticism have increasingly been raised. The authors take up the question of the foundation of rights and explore the postmodern challenges to efforts to ground rights outside of history and language. In these essays, potentially abstract debates come alive as they are related to the struggles of real people attempting to cope with, and improve, their living conditions. The significance of legal rights is measured not just in terms of philosophical categories or as a collection of histories, but as they are experienced in the lives of men and women seeking to come to terms with rights in contemporary life.

The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society is an authoritative study of the relationship between law and social interaction. 32 original essays by an international group of expert scholars examine a wide range of critical questions. Authors represent various theoretical, methodological, and political commitments. Addresses classical areas and new themes in law and society research, including: the gap between law on the books and law in action; the complexity of institutional processes; the significance of new media; and the relationship between law and identity. Engages the exciting work now being done in England, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, South Africa, Israel, as well as developing world scholarship.
Available in print and online.

Political representation lies at the core of modern politics. Democracies, with their vast numbers of citizens, could not operate without representative institutions. Yet relations between the democratic ideal and the everyday practice of political representation have never been well defined and remain the subject of vigorous debate among historians, political theorists, lawyers, and citizens. In this volume, an eminent group of scholars move forward the debates about political representation on a number of fronts. Drawing on insights from political science, history, political theory, economics, and anthropology, the authors provide much-needed clarity to some of the most vexing questions about political representation. Topics discussed include representation before democracy, political parties, minorities, electoral competition, and ideology.

An advanced level reference work which surveys the current state of constitutional law. The book presents the key issues in constitutional law thematically allowing for a truly comparative approach to the subject. It also pays particular attention to constitutional design, identifying and evaluating various solutions to the challenges involved in constitutional architecture. The book is split into four parts for ease of reference: Part One: General issues "sets issues of constitutional law firmly in context including topics such as the making of constitutions, the impact of religion and culture on constitutions, and the relationship between international law and domestic constitutions. Part Two: Structures presents different approaches in regard to institutions or state organization and structural concepts such as emergency powers and electoral systems Part Three: Rights covers the key rights often enshrined in constitutions Part Four: New Challenges - explores issues of importance such as migration and refugees, sovereignty under pressure from globalization, Supranational Organizations and their role in creating post-conflict constitutions, and new technological challenges.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the field of law and politics in all its diversity, ranging from such traditional subjects as theories of jurisprudence, constitutionalism, judicial politics and law-and-society to such re-emerging subjects as comparative judicial politics, international law, and democratization.