Legal History Beyond Europe

When English law arrived in India, it met legal traditions of considerable age and complexity. The encounter changed both sides — yet it has long been studied from one direction only, with India as the receiving end of a story centred elsewhere.

The Centre for Legal History of India, newly established in the department of Professor Stefan Vogenauer and led by Dr Reeju Ray, proceeds from a different premise. The Indian subcontinent has distinct legal traditions in its own right, one that merits sustained attention on its own terms.

The Centre showcases the richness and breadth of Indian legal history, identifying areas of common ground while highlighting the diversity of legal traditions and interdisciplinary perspectives. It maintains formal collaborations with leading Indian law schools NLSIU Bangalore and NALSAR. Its aim is a multilateral research network connecting Frankfurt with scholars and institutions across India and beyond.

The Centre offers scholarships and guest residencies for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers on a rolling basis. Applications are welcome at any time.

Mission Statement

We provide a forum for reflecting on law.
We explore its theory and history in a comparative and global perspective.
We address societal challenges by contributing to a deeper understanding of law.

Multidisciplinary Theory of Law

Department Marietta Auer

Historical Regimes of Normativity

Department Thomas Duve

European and Comparative Legal History

Department Stefan Vogenauer

The Hidden Heritage of the European Union: The Legacy of the Law of the League of Nations

The hidden heritage of the European Union: the legacy of the law of the League of Nations

Max Planck Research Group | Michel Erpelding

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News

Magna Carta and the Fight for Rights in Colonial India

May 18, 2026

Erica Kim Ollikainen-Read explores how the ‘myth of Magna Carta’ travelled to India and was reinterpreted by the British colonisers and by the Indian people in their struggle with Britain as a colonial authority. In particular, the project examines Queen Victoria’s 1858 Proclamation to the ‘Princes, Chiefs, and People of India’. This was considered by contemporaries to be ‘India’s Magna Carta’ and has recently been studied as a ‘constitutional antecedent’ to India’s modern constitutional history.

From Kant to Kantorowicz

June 18, 2026

Volume 2 of Studies in Legal Theory is about Hermann Kantorowicz who was a formidable legal scholar in the turbulent first three decades of the 20th century, a leading participant in the ‘renaissance’ of legal philosophy in Germany. He gained an international reputation as a legal historian and legal theorist (and no small notoriety for his contrarian, combative views). He first formulated a ‘free law’ theory in Kampf um die Rechtswissenschaft in 1906, his bold strike against orthodox jurisprudence.

When a brand becomes property

June 09, 2026

A trademark once did one job: tell a shopper who made a product and what to expect. So why does it now behave like property? Parand Yaghubi traces how courts and legislators expanded trademark protection into something property-like, and asks the larger question behind it: when is such an expansion of legal protection justified at all?