McDowell, M., Review on The History of Law in Europe

Comprehensive and accessible, this book offers a concise synthesis of the evolution of the law in Western Europe, from ancient Rome to the beginning of the twentieth century. It situates law in the wider framework of Europe’s political, economic, social and cultural developments. Offering a readily graspable and sound structure, chapters are organized according to the civil law systems and common law systems. Each chapter is built around the evolution of the four sources of the law: legal science, legislation, courts and customary law, set chronologically against the relevant historical context. Throughout this in-depth presentation of the key determinants in European legal history, Bart Wauters and Marco de Benito allow readers to understand how the law arose and evolved in Europe as a shared language, of which its different national laws are but dialectal expressions – with the unique exception, perhaps, of English common law, whose peculiarity is likewise due to accidents of history which are themselves explored. With its elegant comparative approach, this book will appeal to European Law students and scholars looking for a concise, yet academically sound, account of the history of law in Europe.

International and Comparative Law Review, 2017

2004

2018

Course description The aim of the seminar is to problematize law in socio-legal and multidisciplinary approaches and to trace "law in action" beyond the static and descriptive dimension of legislations. Locating law in its socio-temporal context and considering the legal phenomena as a multi-layered dynamic process, the seminar intends to explore the complex relationship between law, legal institutions and socio-historical dynamics and to problematize law within the social landscape and the particular cultural settings in which it emerges in relation to a variety of social actors. As Christopher Tomlins argues, the project of situating law in its socio-temporal context engenders an almost infinite set of relationships for examination. Normative approaches investigating law only understand it within the narrow context of legal reforms and are far from reflecting the intellectual and epistemological process, which preceded the ultimate form of legislations. After introducing the major theories on the sociology of law, the seminar intends and to explore law as a social product. Without leaving aside the making of state laws and other forms of normativity, the epistemological dimension of the seminar will focus on law in all its variety, in the form of ideas, ways of reasoning, doctrines, legal and cultural transfers, and more importantly as a subject of legal science and will analyze the role of education and social movements in the development of legal thought. Such an approach to law also opens a productive dialogue between neighboring disciplines, law, history and sociology and offers an empirical laboratory through historical case studies. The seminar will privilege the Ottoman/Turkish geographical space in relation to Europe without neglecting a global context. The time frame will mainly cover the nineteenth century. The seminar will contextualize law within historical momentums and global movements (such as constitutionalism, dynamics of revolutions, etc.) and will address issues such as legal pluralism and imperialism. The various themes of this seminar will also overlap with those of imperial history.

International and Comparative Law Review, 2017, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 255-257, 2017

Glossae European Journal of Legal History , 2018

Luisa Brunori, Aniceto Masferrer, Alain Wijffels, GLOSSAE. European Journal of Legal History 15 (2018), (available at http://www.glossae.eu)

Romanian Journal of Comparative Law , 2017

Razvan Cosmin Roghina, The History of Law in Europe. An Introduction, 8 Rom. J. Comp. L. 307 (2017).