Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches

Thomas Duve (ed.)

Global Perspectives on Legal History 1
Frankfurt am Main: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History 2014. VII, 568 S.
Online version: Open Access (PDF download, license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND)
Printed version: 27,80 € (print on demand at epubli)

ISSN 2196-9752
ISBN 978-3-944773-00-1
eISBN 978-3-944773-10-0

Persistent link to the online version: http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/gplh1


Legal History presents a broad panorama of historical processes that trigger theoretical reflections on legal transfers and legal transplants and on the problem of the reception and assimilation laws and other modes of normativity. In this volume, legal historians across the globe reflect on their analytical traditions and present case studies in order to discuss how entangled histories of law can be understood, analyzed and written.

In the first section of this volume, ‘Traditions of Transnational Legal History’, the authors revisit specific achievements and shortcomings of legal historical research against the backdrop of postcolonial and global studies. Reflections on our own disciplinary traditions that reveal the path-dependencies include critical accounts on the tradition of ‘European Legal History’, ‘Codification history’, the emergence of ‘Hindu Law’, and the methodological aspects of Comparative Law.

The four articles in the second section, ‘Empires and Law’, showcase entangled legal histories forged in imperial spaces, for instance, through treaties concluded in the spheres of influence of ancient Roman Empire, which in this instance is analyzed as a process of ‘narrative transculturation’. Analogously, transnational institutions adjudicating merchant-disputes in the Early Modern Spanish Empire and normative frameworks constructed in a multilingual space shortly after its decline are analyzed as ‘diffusion and hybridization’. And finally, the spotlight is cast on the so-called ‘craftsmen of transfer’ and the bureaucrats that took practical comparative law as the basis to design the German colonial law.

In the third section, ‘Analyzing transnational law and legal scholarship in 19th and early 20th century’, seven case studies offer theoretical reflections about entangled legal histories. The discussions range from civil law codifications in Latin America as ‘reception’ or ‘normative transfers’, entangled histories of constitutionalism as ‘translations’ and ‘legal transfer’, formation of transnational legal orders in 19th century International Law and the International Law on state bankruptcies to the impact of transnational legal scholarship on criminology. All articles engage in methodological reflections and discussions about their concrete application in legal historical research.

 

Contents

Introduction

3 Thomas Duve
Entanglements in Legal History. Introductory Remarks

Traditions of Transnational Legal History

29 Thomas Duve
European Legal History – Concepts, Methods, Challenges
67 Inge Kroppenberg, Nikolaus Linder
Coding the Nation. Codification History from a (Post-)Global Perspective
101 Geetanjali Srikantan
Towards New Conceptual Approaches in Legal History: Rethinking “Hindu Law” through Weber’s Sociology of Religion
129 George Rodrigo Bandeira Galindo
Legal Transplants between Time and Space

Empires and Law

151 Emiliano J. Buis
Ancient Entanglements: The Influence of Greek Treaties in Roman ‘International Law’ under the Framework of Narrative Transculturation
187 Ana Belem Fernández Castro
A Transnational Empire Built on Law: The Case of the Commercial Jurisprudence of the House of Trade of Seville (1583–1598)
213 Seán Patrick Donlan
Entangled up in Red, White, and Blue: Spanish West Florida and the American Territory of Orleans, 1803–1810
253 Jakob Zollmann
German Colonial Law and Comparative Law, 1884–1919

Analyzing Transnational Law and Legal Scholarship in the 19th and early 20th Century

297 Francisco J. Andrés Santos
Napoleon in America?
Reflections on the Concept of ‘Legal Reception’ in the Light of the Civil Law Codification in Latin America
315 Agustín Parise
Libraries of Civil Codes as Mirrors of Normative Transfers from Europe to the Americas: The Experiences of Lorimier in Quebec (1871–1890) and Varela in Argentina (1873–1875)
385 Eduardo Zimmermann
Translations of the “American Model” in Nineteenth Century Argentina: Constitutional Culture as a Global Legal Entanglement
427 Bram Delbecke
Modern Constitutionalism and Legal Transfer: The Political Offence in the French Charte Constitutionnelle (1830) and the Belgian Constitution (1831)
461 Lea Heimbeck
Discovering Legal Silence: Global Legal History and the Liquidation of State Bankruptcies (1854–1907)
489 Clara Kemme
The History of European International Law from a Global Perspective: Entanglements in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century India
543 Michele Pifferi
Global Criminology and National Tradition: The Impact of Reform Movements on Criminal Systems at the Beginning of the 20th Century
565 Contributors
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