15 January 2019

Comparative Legal History

BOOK: Olivier MORÉTEAU, Aniceto MASFERRER, and Kjell A. MODÉER, eds., Comparative Legal History [Research Handbooks in Comparative Law series] (London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019). ISBN 9781781955215, £175.50




Edward Elgar is publishing a research handbook on comparative legal history.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Is comparative legal history an emerging discipline or a much-needed dialogue between two academic subjects? This research handbook presents the field in a uniquely holistic way, and illustrates how comparative law and legal history are inextricably related.

Cementing a solid theoretical grounding for the discipline, legal historians and comparatists place this subject at the forefront of legal science. Comprehensive in coverage, this handbook collates theory and method for comparative legal history, as well as discussing international legal sources and judicial and civil institutions. Particular attention is paid to custom and codification, contracts, civil procedure and ownership. By assessing the evolution of law across European, Asian, African and American environments from the pre-modern era to the nineteenth century, the chapters provide stimulating and enlightening cases of legal history through a comparative lens.

A centrepiece for this field of scholarship, this research handbook will be an essential resource for scholars interested in comparative law, legal theory and legal history, from both legal and social science backgrounds.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Edited by Olivier Moréteau, Louisiana State University, US, Aniceto Masferrer, University of Valencia, Spain and Kjell A. Modéer, University of Lund, Sweden

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents:
List of contributors
Acknowledgments
Aniceto Masferrer, Kjell Å Modéer & Olivier Moréteau
The emergence of comparative legal history
PART I Theory and Methods
1. What is comparative legal history? Legal historiography and the revolt against formalism, 1930-60
Adolfo Giuliani
2. Comparative? Legal? History? Crossing Boundaries
Sean Donlan
3. Methodological perspectives in comparative legal history: an analytical approach
Dag Michalsen
4. Comparative legal history: methodology for morphology
Matthew Dyson
PART II LEGAL SOURCES
5. Here, there, everywhere or... nowhere? Some comparative and historical afterthoughts about custom as a source of law
Jacques Vanderlinden
6. Convergence and the colonization of custom in pre-modern Europe
Emily Kadens
7. Custom as a source of law in European and East Asian legal history
Marie Seong-Hak Kim
8. The ius commune as the ‘ratio scripta’ in the civil law tradition: a comparative approach to the Spanish case
Aniceto Masferrer and Juan A. Obarrio
9. Legal education in England and continental Europe between the middle ages and the early-modern period: a comparison
Dolores Freda
PART III LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
10. The triumph of judicial review: the evolution of post-revolutionary legal thought
Jean-Louis Halperin
11. Killing the vampire of human culture: Slavery as a problem in international law
Paul Finkelman and Seymour Drescher
12. Continental European superior courts and procedure in civil actions (11th-19th centuries)
CH (Remco) van Rhee
13. The genesis of concepts of possession and ownership in the civilian tradition and at common law: how did the common law manage without a concept of ownership? Why the Roman law did not?
Anna Taitslin
14. The common law and the Code civil: the curious case of the law of contract
Warren Swain
15. When the wind turned from South to West: the transition of Scandinavian legal cultures 1945–2000, a comparative sketch
Kjell Å Modéer
PART IV CODIFICATION
16. Unification and codification in today’s European private law and nineteenth-century Germany: the challenges and opportunities of comparing historical and ongoing events
Dirk Heirbaut
17. Owning the conceptualization of ownership in American civil law jurisdictions and the origins of nineteenth-century code provisions
Agustín Parise
18. Why was private law not codified in Sweden and Finland?
Heikki Pihlajamäki
Index

More information here