Each year, a new cohort of young scholars joins our Summer Academy, a two-week program of seminars, research, and debate at the intersection of legal history and theory. Participants examine how law has been attacked, defended, and transformed - from abolitionist petitions to postcolonial constitutions, from courtrooms to the streets. The theme of this year’s Academy draws on a provocation by Rudolf von Jhering, who wrote in 1872 that “the life of the law is a struggle.” For him, law emerged not from consensus, but from conflict - between states, classes, and individuals. It’s an idea that still resonates in battles over reparations, decolonization, and civil rights.

What happens when someone acts without permission on behalf of another – and third parties are affected? Midas Kempcke, doctoral researcher at the mpilhlt, explores this intricate legal scenario in his PhD project on interventions with external effects in the law of negotiorum gestio. At the heart of his research lies a classic yet unresolved problem in private law: when an unauthorized intervenor enters the interest sphere of a principal and concludes contracts with third parties, who is legally bound?

Sexual abuse by clergy is not a uniquely modern scandal. Long before today's headlines, the Christian Church was already wrestling with how to respond when those in holy office became the perpetrators. In “Sexueller Kindesmissbrauch und Sodomie im mittelalterlichen Kirchenrecht”, Kevin Kulp sheds light on how medieval Church law addressed such transgressions, offering a detailed legal-historical study that stretches from late antiquity to the Reformation. This is the fourth volume under the theme Recht im ersten Jahrtausend, published as part of the series Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte (Volume 345).