History at the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference

The 23rd Annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, to be held October 14–16, 2026, in
London, England, has at least two session of interest to legal historians.

Roman, English, and Other Legacies: The Role of History in Property Law

More than other areas of basic private law, property draws upon and reflects historical sources and practices in a wide range of contexts and applications.  This panel will explore how and why historical considerations shape contemporary property law.  Discussion will address the uses and limits of historical analysis in property theory and doctrine, including questions about continuity, adaptation, and divergence. The panel will also consider how appeals to history inform present-day debates about ownership, authority, and the evolution of property institutions.

Of Locke, Bentham, and Blackstone: English Contributions to Property’s Philosophical Foundations

This panel will discuss normative justifications for property law, with a special emphasis on the contributions of major English theorists.  It will explore how themes of labor, productivity, security, and legal order have shaped enduring understandings of ownership and its moral underpinnings.  The discussion will consider the continuing influence of writers like Locke, Bentham, and Blackstone on contemporary property theory, as well as the tensions among their approaches.

--Dan Ernst 

Ancient Criminal Law: A Global Perspective

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE]

On June 24, 2026 (at 12pm Eastern), join us for an international workshop featuring contributors to a forthcoming Modern Criminal Law Review Special Issue on “Ancient Criminal Law: A Global Perspective,” guest edited by Clifford Ando (University of Chicago).

Recent years have witnessed several revolutions in the study of ancient law. These include new models for the study of ancient states, deriving in particular from comparative study; new interpretive emphasis on the limits of state infrastructural power; detailed study of the pluralist nature of legal authority in ancient empires in particular; and the extraordinary recovery of previously unknown documentary materials, especially in central Asian and East Asian contexts. This issue seeks to bring these new insights to bear on the study of criminal law in a global array of contexts:  the Ancient Near East, classical Athens, Qin and Han period China, the high Roman empire, and rabbinic Judaism.

Participants include: 

Clifford Ando, University of Chicago (moderator)
Beth Berkowitz, Columbia University
Ari Bryen, Vanderbilt University
Liang Cai, University of Notre Dame
Benjamin Gallant, Harvard University
Adriaan Lanni, Harvard University
Mark Letteney, University of Washington
Seth Richardson, University of Chicago
Andrew Wolpert, University of Florida

To join us for this free online event, please register here. Registration is encouraged, but not required; if you prefer to join the event directly, head over to the MCLR+ YouTube channel at the time of the event (please note the time zone). All attendees will have the opportunity to post questions and comments via YouTube live chat.

Penna's "Byzantine Law" and Book Launch

Daphne Penna, University of Groningen and KU Leuven, has published Byzantine Law: The Law of the Eastern Roman Empire, in the "Elements in Rethinking Byzantium" series of the Cambridge University Press.  On May 28, she will speak about the book in the Law and Humanities Seminar Series of the Peking University School of Transnational Law.  Here is Cambridge's description of the book:

The purpose of this Element is to introduce the study of later Roman law (Byzantine law) to a wider academic audience. Currently a great deal of specialized knowledge is necessary to approach the field of Byzantine law. This Element works to break down the barriers to this fascinating subject by providing a brief, clear introduction to the topic. It makes a scholarly contribution by placing Byzantine law in a broader perspective and by reconsidering some of the aspects of the study of Byzantine law. The Element places Byzantine law outside of the box by comparing, for example, Byzantine law to the European legal tradition and highlighting the role that Byzantine law can have in unravelling the common legal past of Europe. It gives also information on the status of Byzantine legal studies and makes suggestions on how to study Byzantine law and why.

--Dan Ernst 

Alan Rodger Postgraduate Visiting Researcher

 [We have the following announcement, via H-Law.  DRE]

The University of Glasgow School of Law invites applications from PhD students in Roman law/legal history for the post of Alan Rodger Postgraduate Visiting Researcher, to be held during the 2026/27 academic year. The selected candidate will spend a term in Glasgow and receive a £2,000 award for support, and will be encouraged to speak to students and at research seminars.  The deadline for applications is 26 June 2026.

The post was established in memory of Lord Rodger of Earlsferry (1944-2011), Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and scholar of Roman law and legal history.

Ernest Metzger
Douglas Professor of Civil Law
The School of Law,
Stair Building
5 - 8 The Square
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
United Kingdom

Disabilities and Women in Ancient Rome

The workshop Disabilities and Women in Ancient Rome: Legal, Social and Cultural Perspectives will be held at the University of Helsinki Main Building, Room U3039 (3rd floor). It will begin at 10.00 am (EEST) May 4 with the keynote. Remote participation is possible through this Zoom link.  Both in-person and remote participants should register.  For in-person participants, we would like to ask whether you are participating in the lunch (at the expense of participants) and the afternoon coffee.  Please register through this form.

10-11.15 Keynote

Prof. Christian Laes: Women and disabilities in Antiquity: between presentism and daily life 

11.30-13.00 session 1: Disabled Women in the Roman Narratives 

Sofia Vierula: The case of Harpaste: Lived experience of disability in Seneca’s letter to Lucilius 

Mathilde Chartrand: The Daily Life of a Furiosa: On the Gendered Consequences of Mental Illness

Fran Geldard: Enslavement and Disability in Eusebian Martyr Narrative

14.00-15.30 session 2: Women, Disability and Roman Law

Arnaud Paturet: Some Reflections on the Status of Deaf People by Roman Jurists 

Kaius Tuori: Infirmity and monstrosity: on the legal construction of female disability in law

Jana Mauri Marlborough: Against All Odds: The Legal Position of Wet Nurses in Roman Law 

16.00-17.30 session 3: Intersections of Gender and Disability in Late Antiquity 

Gaetana Balestra: Muta puella fuit: The Mute Woman between tutela mulierum and Justinian's Legislation.

Elena Pezzato Heck: Mental Illness as Grounds for Repudiation in Late Antiquity and the Justinian Era

Arttu Alaranta: Vulnerable Life-Cycle Moments and Disabilities in Women’s Asceticism during Late Antiquity

--Dan Ernst 

Weekend Roundup

• 
  "The Selden Society regularly funds a Milsom Studentship for a person undertaking research in English legal history leading to the degree of PhD (or equivalent) at a university in the United Kingdom." 

• A review of Geoffrey Samuel's Principia Iuris: A Historical and Comparative Introduction to the English Law (Edward Elgar Publishing) (Law Society Gazette). 

• A review of James Hart's The U.S. Supreme Court in American Society: Historical Perspectives (Edward Elgar Publishing) (Law Society Gazette).

• Washington University-St. Louis Law invited UCLA's Stuart Banner back to lecture on his history of the US Supreme Court (Student Life).   

• On Tuesday, April 28, from  6:00 - 8:00 PM, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, First Department with support from the Historical Society of the New York Courts, will sponsor a talk on The Constitution’s Framers: What They Teach us about Making America Better, by John D. Feerick, Norris Professor of Law, Fordham Law School Dean Emeritus, and a panel discussion with William M. Treanor, Dean Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center and Fordham Law School and John Rogan, Senior Fellow, Fordham Law School.  Register here. 

• Jill Hasday, Minnesota Law, discusses We the Men on the Infinite Women podcast. 

• A fully funded four-year Collaborative Doctoral Studentship at the University of Leeds on The Making of the National Archive: The First Century of the Public Record Office.  

• Over at Balkinization, a symposium is underway of Stephen Skowronek's The Adaptability Paradox.   Several legal historians are slate to contribute.

• The National Constitution Center has posted the recording of its Town Hall on Women and the American Revolution with Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emerita of American History at Cornell University, and Rosemarie Zagarri, distinguished university professor of history at George Mason University. 

• ICYMI: Back to the archives to defend reproductive rights (Ms. Magazine).  A dispatch from the new "civic education" (University of Colorado-Boulder).  New York's woman lawyers (NYSBA).  Michael R. Dreeben revisits Robert Jackson’s "The Federal Prosecutor" (HLR). 

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers. 

Legal History Review 113:3-4

Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis/Revue d'histoire du droit/The Legal History Review 113: 3-4 (2025) has been published, Here, with a hat tip to ESCLH Blog, is the TOC:

The Hexabiblos: the Humanist quest for the text (Lorena Atzeri)

Since the publication of its editio princeps in 1540, the Hexabiblos of Constantinos Harmenopoulos attracted the attention of many legal humanists, including Cujas, Contius, Soarez de Ribeira, Falkenburg, and others. As was their practice, they wrote annotations, emendations and comments in the margins of their personal copies, often collating the printed text with other manuscripts they discovered in various libraries. Some of this precious evidence has been preserved in a set of seven copies now in the Advocates Library in Edinburgh. These copies were used in the 18th century by Otto Reitz, the scholar entrusted by Meerman with the preparation of a new edition of the Hexabiblos. The books were later sold at the auction of Meerman’s library in 1824. This late Byzantine source offers an illuminating example of the philological approach of the legal humanists, and of the process which, over the centuries, led from manuscript text to printed edition.

Frühklassische Testamentsauslegung im Spiegel von Phaedrus Fab. iv,5 (Andreas Herrmann)

In Phaedrus we find striking examples of law in literature. Not only does Phaedrus exhibit a propensity for juristic parlance, he shows a recurring interest in questions of law as well as an understanding of legal concepts. His Fab. iv,5 in particular reflects topics which will have occupied early classical Roman jurists in their attempts to interpret testamentary dispositions. Read with a view to law as literature, Phaedrus’s narration draws attention to a particular pattern in which arguments are presented in some texts composed by Roman jurists.

‘Quibus permissum est iura condere’ Some ideas on the origin of the Ius respondendi (W.J. Zwalve) 

It is contended in this article that there has never been a ‘ius respondendi’, a licence to respond, introduced by the emperor Augustus. Instead, Justinian, after having repealed the 426 Law of Citations, wanted to stress that the authority of Roman jurisprudence (ius) had always been dependent on imperial authority even before the Law of Citations, retroactively granting an imperial ‘licence to explain the law’ to all jurists mentioned in his Digest.

Publication and the validity of constitutions in the Late Roman Empire (A.J.B. Sirks) 

Contrary to the current view of Mommsen, Seeck and Schwind that imperial legislation required publication to gain validity, Bianchi Fossati Vanzetti and particularly Kreuzsaler maintained that imperial legislation gained validity directly by the issuing by the emperor (the datio). Purpose of publication was merely to make the law known. For legal acts performed in the period between datio and publication according to the old law generally restitution was granted. In a reaction Kaiser has submitted arguments against this position. The present article examines his and Kreuzsaler’s arguments and confirms the conclusion of Kreuzsaler.

Henricus Kinschotius (1541–1608) On practices of grace and debt relief before the Sovereign Council of Brabant (Nicolas Ruys)

This article is aimed at investigating the power to pardon insolvent debtors in the early modern Duchy of Brabant through the analysis of Henricus Kinschotius’ treatise De solutionum induciis, 4th part of his opus De rescriptis Gratiae, a supremo Brabantia senatu nomine Ducis concedi solitis. In his treatise, Kinschotius, a Brabantian lawyer of the second part of the xvith century, seeks to study the so-called letters of atterminatio and respite, which are ducal grace letters intended to grant payment suspension to insolvent bona fide debtors. As supreme jurisdiction of the duchy, the Sovereign Council of Brabant is the main institution empowered to issue these pardon letters on behalf of the Duke. But granting such debt deferral is likely to affect the creditors’ interests. As a matter of consequence, several legal requirements must be fulfilled to benefit from a letter of atterminatio: the requesting debtor must notably provide a sufficient guarantee and obtain the consent of the majority of his creditors. This paper will thus discuss the procedural aspects for acquiring those letters, the scope of application ratione personae and materiae (with a list of claims that cannot be subject to a debt deferral) as well as their legal conditions and effects. Finally, special attention will be paid to the common practices of abuse committed by fraudulent debtors and which solutions Kinschotius proposes to put an end to it. As it will be concluded, Kinschotius’ study of the practice of letters of atterminatio and respite by the Council of Brabant illustrates a strong and tenacious autonomy of a provincial institution in the context of the assertion of sovereignty and centralisation of power that characterised the modern Habsburg Low Countries.

Passer lectres et contraitz entre les parties consentens et eux soubmectans a ladicte jurisdicion volontaire De vrijwillige rechtspleging voor publieke notarissen, grafelijke leenmannen en lokale schepenbanken binnen laatmiddeleeuws Henegouwen (14de–15de eeuw) (Falco Van Der Schueren)

In late medieval Hainaut, notaries public, comital vassals, and local benches of aldermen alike were competent to authenticate deeds of various legal transactions. As they could all exercise voluntary or non-contentious jurisdiction, they competed with one another in a free legal market. From a legal-historical perspective, this contribution aims to assess their relative market share. Methodologically, it uses the concepts of ‘validity’ and ‘proof’ as objective analytical criteria in a contextual framework combining normative texts, a unique fifteenth-century formulary, and a substantial corpus of chirographs, sealed charters, and notarial instruments. In doing so, it examines how these three legal actors ensured the validity of the transactions they handled, and to what extent their deeds had any probative value.

Versions of War Slavery: Grotius, Hobbes and the reception of their ideas (Gustaaf van Nifterik)

This article discusses two approaches to war slavery, one by Hugo Grotius based on jus gentium with a moral appeal to treat one’s war slaves well, the other by Thomas Hobbes for whom jus gentium plays no role and who focuses on the difference between chained and unchained slaves. Next, we look at the works of Pufendorf, Huber, and Noodt. There we find elements of both Grotius and Hobbes, in various combinations and with different outcomes. We see Grotius’ moral appeal gradually becoming an integrated part of jus gentium, applying to both chained and unchained slaves.

Book reviews

Daphne Penna [and] Roos Meijering, A sourcebook on Byzantine law, Illustrating Byzantine law through the sources. [Medieval law and its practice, 34]. Brill, Leiden – Boston [2022]. xvii + 224 p. (Philipp Scheibelreiter)

Isabel Alfonso, José M. Andrade [and] André Evangelista Marques (eds.), Records and processes of dispute settlements in early medieval societies, Iberia and beyond. [Medieval law and its practise, 41]. Brill, Leiden – Boston 2024. xiv + 425 S. isbn 978-90-04-68295-5 (hardcopy), 978-90-04-68300-6 (e-book) (Steffen Schlinker)

Frisian Land Law, A critical edition and translation of the Freeska Landriucht, edited by H. Nijdam, J. Hallebeck [and] Hylkje de Jong. [Medieval law and its practice, 33]. Brill, Leiden – Boston [2023]. viii + 449 p. (Helle Vogt)

Srdan Šarkic, A history of Serbian mediaeval law. [Medieval law and its practice, 39]. Brill, Leiden – Boston [2023]. xiii + 616 p. (Tomislav Karlovic)

G. Mazzanti, Matrimoni post-tridentini, Un dibatto dottrinale fra continuità e cambiamento (secc. xvi–xviii). [Diritto cultura società, Storia e problemi della giustizia criminale, 14]. Bononia University Press, [Bologna 2020]. 235 p. (Ton Meijers)

Sir John Baker, Sources of English legal history, Public law to 1750. Oxford University Press, [Oxford] 2024. lii + 788 p. (Guillaume Leyte)

T. Pasquiet-Briand (dir.), Les conflits doctrinaux du xix e siècle, Une analyse des fondements politiques du droit. Éditions mare & martin, [Paris 2023]. 261 p. (Guillaume Grégoire)

A. Cordes, H.-P. Haferkamp, B. Kannowski, H. Lück, H. de Wall, D. Werkmüller† und C. Bertelsmeier-Kierst (Hrg.), Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte hrg , 2., völlig überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, Redaktion: A.M. Auer, A.-M. Heil, R. Penssel, L. Samad-Tari, S. Schmidt, P.-M. Schmitt, O. Walther, Th. Wanninger und M. Wolter, Band iv: Nüchternheit, nüchtern – Richtsteig. Erich Schmidt Verlag, [Berlin 2024]. xvi S. + 2016 Sp. (Alain Wijffels)

P. Collin [and] A. Casagrande (eds.), Law and diversity: European and Latin American experiences from a legal historical perspective, vol. 1: Fundamental questions. [Global perspectives on legal history, 21]. Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, Frankfurt am Main 2023. xii + 764 p. (Sandrine Brachotte)

--Dan Ernst 

du Plessis's "Henry Maine’s Ancient Law as an Expression of Victorian Humanism"

Paul J. du Plessis, University of Edinburgh, has published Henry Maine’s Ancient Law as an Expression of Victorian Humanism (University of Edinburgh Press):

This monograph offers a comprehensive contextual analysis of Maine’s Ancient Law, emphasising the author’s use of various sources to construct the book's key themes. Ancient Law was written as a sophisticated piece of rhetorical prose grounded in Maine’s education in the classics. Central to this analysis is the significant role of Roman law in shaping the narrative, particularly its influence on Maine’s arguments and conclusions.

The monograph also positions Maine’s work within the broader intellectual debates of the nineteenth century, especially concerning the teaching of English law and Britain’s colonial presence in India. By situating Maine’s Ancient Law within this larger context, the study enhances our understanding of the text, revealing the historical legal framework that resonates in modern legal discourse and thought. This connection enriches our knowledge of Maine’s contributions and highlights the enduring relevance of his ideas.

–Dan Ernst

Herz's "God and the Bueaucrat"

Zachary Herz, University of Colorado, Boulder, has published The God and the Bureaucrat
Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories (Cambridge University Press):

Why is Roman law so boring? In this book, Zachary Herz argues that the bureaucratic, positivistic world of Roman law is not a distraction from the violent autocracy of the Roman empire, but an imagined escape. Lawyers, bureaucrats, and even emperors used legal writing to think about worlds that were safer or fairer than the one in which they lived. This archive of political imagination slowly became a law-code, and now guides readers through a legal system about which its authors could only dream. From Augustus to Justinian, this book shows how law symbolized order in chaotic times, and how that symbol eventually took on a life of its own. From the enlightened judgements of Hadrian to the great jurists and child rulers of Severan Rome, Herz reveals what Romans were really talking about when they talked about law.  

--Dan Ernst.  TOC after the jump.

Exploring the Foundations of Contract Law

Cause and Consideration: Exploring the Foundations of Contract Law, an anthology edited by Bruno Rodríguez-Rosado, Rocío Caro Gándara, and Antonio Legerén-Molina, has been published by Hart/Bloomsbury.  The publishers tell us that you may order it online here and use the code GLR BD8 to get 20 percent off.

This book provides a comprehensive study of two parallel notions of civil and common law: cause and consideration . . .  in three ways; with historical, comparative, and functional perspectives. Aspects of cause and consideration are hotly contested by contract lawyers and this book will bring clarity by looking at the English and Continental positions. Key areas of focus include: enforceability, questions of legality and morality, contractual justice, and the correction of unjustified property displacements.

Bringing together a team of experts, the book discusses (in some cases for the first time in English) complex questions of both academic and practical importance.

–Dan Ernst. TOC after the jump.

A Conference for Charles Donahue

[Congratulations to Professor Donahue.  We wish we could be there!  DRE]

The Learned and Lived Law: A Celebration in Honor of Charles Donahue, May 19, 2025, Lewis 214, Harvard Law School.

Please join us for a celebration honoring Professor Charles Donahue and marking the publication of The Learned and Lived Law:  Essays in Honor of Charles Donahue.  We will have a day of presentations by chapter authors as well as a display of medieval manuscripts in the Harvard Law Library in the early afternoon.

Welcome
8:45 – 9:00 am
Interim Dean John C.P. Goldberg
Saskia Lettmaier and Elizabeth Papp Kamali

Panel 1: Roman Law
Chair: James Townshend
9:00 – 10:00 am

Charles Bartlett, Roman Property, Corporate Personhood, and the Politics of Natural Law in Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy: Venice, Baldus, and the res communes omnium

Wim Decock, “For the Sake of Mental Health and Mutual Peace”: The Transactio-Agreement in Early Modern Law and Theology

Panel 2: Medieval and Early Modern Law
Chair: Elizabeth Papp Kamali
10:15 – 12:15 pm

Samantha Kahn Herrick, Getting Ahead in a Twelfth-Century City: The Ambitious Monks of Saint-Clément, Metz

Ryan Rowberry, The Papal Constitution Execrabilis (1317) and Clerical Justices in the English Royal Courts

Elizabeth Mellyn, Suicide in Early Modern Italy

Carol Symes, The “Desire of Deeds”: On Cherishing Medieval English Charters

12:15 – 1:15 pm
Lunch available in Lewis 202

Medieval Manuscript Display
Harvard Law Library, 4th floor, Caspersen Room
1:15 – 2:15 pm
Arranged by Sarah Wharton, Historical & Special Collections
Co-Hosts: Carol Symes and Charles Bartlett

Panel 3: American Legal History
Chair: Ryan Rowberry
2:30 – 3:30 pm

Sally Hadden, Lawyers and Their Book Collections: Notes from the Eighteenth Century

Amalia Kessler, The American Importation of the Comparative Accusatorial/Inquisitorial Divide: Francis Lieber’s Failed Transplant and Its Early Twentieth-Century Resurgence

Panel 4: Literature and Legal Theory
Chair: Saskia Lettmaier
3:45-4:45 pm

Anton Chaevitch, Faust: Goethe’s Guide to Legal Progress

Bharath Palle, Wesley Hohfeld’s Modernist Imagination

Closing Reflection
Mary Elizabeth Basile Chopas, De Magistro eruditissimo et beneficentissimo

Furstenberg on Rabbinic Evidence for the Spread of Roman Legal Education

Yair Furstenberg has published open access in Law and History Review Rabbinic Evidence for the Spread of Roman Legal Education in the Provinces:

A long tradition of comparative scholarship has succeeded to establish the impact of Roman legal environment on rabbinic law making during the first two centuries CE, particularly in the field of family and status. Yet, the specific channels for acquiring this knowledge have hitherto remained a matter of conjecture. This paper argues that the rabbis were exposed to the contents of the current legal handbooks. Tractate Qiddushin (on betrothal) of the Mishnah includes two peculiar units: the first (1.1–5) regarding forms of acquisition and the second (3.12) on the status of newborns. Both units appear in key points in the tractate and exhibit striking structural and conceptual similarities to extended portions of the Roman school tradition regarding the laws of status, as handed down in Gaius’ Institutes and Pseudo-Ulpian's liber singularis regularum. It is therefore suggested that these units provide the earliest literary attestation already around the turn of the third century CE for the dissemination of Roman legal education among non-Roman provincials in the East, who sought to adjust their local practices into Roman-like legal structures.

--Dan Ernst

Uncertainty in Comparative Law and Legal History

Published last month: Uncertainty in Comparative Law and Legal History: Known Unknowns, edited by Andrew J. Bell and Joanna McCunn (Routledge, 2025):

Laws are imposed on facts. But what is the law to do when its rules for establishing facts do not—because they cannot—produce a satisfactory answer? Scenarios that raise this intractable uncertainty problem have been treated as isolated concerns, but are in fact endemic across legal systems. They can cross jurisdictional and doctrinal boundaries, have recurred throughout history, and demand creative thinking from those faced with them. This book explores the law’s understandings of and responses to such situations from a comparative historical perspective. It investigates how the law has framed these most difficult problems of uncertainty; dealt with uncertainty’s often unclear boundaries; and developed a broad range of different responses to solve or avoid it, across doctrine, time, and jurisdiction. The work examines a selection of key uncertainty problems across private law as elements of a singular uncertainty issue endemic in legal systems. This analysis will be of interest to historians and comparatists, but also to doctrinal, theoretical, and other scholars and practitioners. The analysis leaves us better informed and better equipped for dealing with future scenarios where uncertainty arises, including insights beyond national and doctrinal confines.

A book launch will take place on Thursday, February 13, 2025, 17:00-19:00 GMT in the Lady Hale Moot Court Room at the University of Bristol Law School and online.  Gwen Seabourne and Catharine Macmillan will participate.

–Dan Ernst.  TOC after the jump.

A Festschrift for David Ibbetson

Essays in Law and History for David Ibbetson, edited by Joe Sampson and Stelios Tofaris is published today by Hart Publishing/Bloomsbury:

Over the last 40 years, David Ibbetson has paved the way in a remarkably broad range of fields.  In ancient law, his scholarship has spanned both the detailed doctrine of the Roman law of obligations and the cross-pollination of legal influences around the ancient Mediterranean. His work on English legal history has ranged from the earliest days of the common law through to the turn of the 20th century, combining forensic archival research with a sensitivity to how lawyers thought about their subject. In European legal history, he has shown the porousness of the civil law and the extent to which it has been shaped by other areas of intellectual life, from theology to rationalist philosophy.

The contributions to this volume in his honour mirror both the breadth and the depth of Ibbetson's scholarship. The book combines chapters from leading legal historians, close colleagues and over a dozen of Ibbetson's students. Some chapters build upon or respond to Ibbetson's ideas, others his areas of interest. The contributions are introduced by Ibbetson's valedictory lecture on the importance of legal history to modern practice and scholarship, and the work yet to be done.

–Dan Ernst.  Table of Contents after the jump.

Weekend Roundup

• The Irish Legal History Society will hold its annual general meeting on November 29.  Following the meeting John G. Gordon will lecture on “‘Where there’s a Will there’s a Contest’: The Will of the Very Rev Frank Henry PP: From Carrickfergus to Rome”  (Law Society Gazette).
  

• The Centre for Law and History Research (Law and History Network) at the University of Bristol will host a seminar by Graham Moore, an Eighteenth-Century Collections Researcher at The National Archives on Confederacy, treason, or robbery? Defining piracy in the seventeenth-century High Court of Admiralty.
  

• A notice of Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in 19th Century England and Wales: For Wives Alone, on Section 21 of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which allowed deserted women to have their feme sole status. Professor Olive Anderson died in 2015 before completing the book. Northumbria University professor academic Dr. Jennifer Aston subsequently came across the manuscript and, with the support of Anderson's daughters, completed it.
  

• On November 8, David Wilkins, University of Richmond, delivered the address “Apart & Akin,” on “the shared histories and legal statuses of Native peoples and African Americans,” at  Appalachian State University (The Appalachian).
  

• The University of Chicago's notice of Samuel Fury Childs Daly's new book, Soldier's Paradise: Militarism in Africa after Empire. 
  

• Yale Law School's notice of Keith E. Whittington’s The Impeachment Power (Yale).
  

• Kate Masur discussed her graphic history Freedom Was In Sight: A Graphic History of Reconstruction the Washington D.C. Region at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (YouTube).
  

• Carl Rice, a visiting assistant professor of Greek and Roman studies at Vassar College, lectured on “Roman Religion and the Citizens of Empire, 200-450 CE,” at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Binghamton University (Pipe Dream).
  

• Korematsu v. United States was re-argued on its 80th anniversary in an event sponsored by the Robert H. Jackson Center at George Washington University Law School (YouTube).
  

• Stephen Sachs summarizes his review of Jack Balkin's Memory and Authority (Volokh Conspiracy).
  

•  ICYMI: The 18th‑Century Origins of Recess Appointments (History).  Uncovering the Legal Records of France’s Once-Largest Jewish Community--an 18th-century pinkas, in Metz (Mosaic).

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Smith on Emancipation in Roman Law

Lionel Smith, Cambridge University, has posted From Mancipatio to Emancipation in Roman Law, which appears in Revue du Notariat 124 (2024): 347-60:

This text was produced as a contribution to a series of seminars entitled Emancip(ense): penser l’émancipation en droit privé (‘Thinking about emancipation in private law’), which took place in 2021-23 and which was co-organized by the Groupe de réflexion en droit privé and the Groupe de recherche sur les humanités juridiques. In the modern civilian tradition, "emancipation" refers to the acquisition of some or all of the incidents of full legal capacity by a person who has not reached the age of majority. This short text traces the development of emancipation in Roman law through the adaptation of an institution of property law, exploring in the process the links between family law and property law in ancient Rome. It argues that in the Roman understanding of one of the most ancient written texts of law, found in the XII Tables, we can see a feature that is in common with modern law, both in the common law and the civil law: when a person acquires a legal power for an other-regarding purpose, they do not hold that power as patrimonial wealth, but on the contrary the power can be taken away if it is misused.

--Dan Ernst

LHR 42:2

Law and History Review 42:2 (May 2024) is now available online:

Legal Pluralism as a Category of Analysis
Jessica Marglin, Mark Letteney

Legal Pluralism's Other: Mythologizing Modern Law
Caroline Humfress

Legal Pluralism from History to Theory and Back: Otto von Gierke, Santi Romano, and Francesco Calasso on Medieval Institutions
Emanuele Conte

The Rise of the Indigenous Jurists
Clifford Ando

Interpolity Law and Jurisdictional Politics
Lauren Benton, Adam Clulow

The Uses and Abuses of Legal Pluralism: A View from the Sideline
Tamar Herzog

Rethinking the Rethinking of Legal Pluralism: Toward a Manifesto for a Pluri-Legal Perspective
Ido Shahar, Karin Carmit Yefet

The Edicts of the Praetors: Law, Time, and Revolution in Ancient Rome
Lisa Pilar Eberle

The Carried-Off and the Constitution: How British Harboring of Fugitives from American Slavery Led to the Constitution of 1787
    Timothy Messer-Kruse

Free Black Witnesses in the Antebellum Upper South
Eric Eisner

Disobedient Children, Hybrid Filiality: Negotiating Parent–Child Relations in Local Legal System in Republican China, 1911–1949
Shumeng Han, Xiangyi Ren

Human Rights at the Edges of Late Imperial Britain: The Tyrer Case and Judicial Corporal Punishment from the Isle of Man to Montserrat, 1972–1990
Christopher Hilliard, Marco Duranti

An Instrument of Military Power: The Development and Evolution of Japanese Martial Law in Occupied Territories, 1894–1945
Kelly Maddox

“Above the Written Law”: Iran-Contra and the Mirage of the Rule of Law
Alan McPherson

--Dan Ernst

Alan Rodger Postgraduate Visiting Researcher at Glasgow

[Via H-Law, we have the following announcement.  DRE.]

The University of Glasgow School of Law invites applications from PhD students in Roman law/legal history for the post of Alan Rodger Postgraduate Visiting Researcher, to be held during the 2024/25 academic year. The selected candidate will spend a term in Glasgow and receive a £2,000 award for support. The deadline for applications is 28 June 2024. Full details are available from our website.

The post was established in memory of Lord Rodger of Earlsferry (1944-2011), Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and scholar of Roman law and legal history.

Contact Information: Ernest Metzger, Douglas Professor of Civil Law, The School of Law, Stair Building, 5 - 8 The Square, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ United Kingdom.

Book Event: di Robilant's "Making of Modern Property Law"

[We have the following announcement.  DRE.]

Please Join us for a Book Symposium featuring Anna di Robilant to celebrate the publication of The Making of Modern Property: Reinventing Roman Law in Europe and its Peripheries 1789–1950 on Tuesday, March 26th, 2024.

In this original intellectual history, Anna di Robilant traces the history of one of the most influential legal, political, and intellectual projects of modernity: the appropriation of Roman property law by liberal nineteenth-century jurists to fit the purposes of modern Europe. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been translated into English, di Robilant outlines how a broad network of European jurists reinvented the classical Roman concept of property to support the process of modernisation. By placing this intellectual project within its historical context, she shows how changing class relations, economic policies and developing ideologies converged to produce the basis of modern property law. Bringing these developments to the twentieth century, this book demonstrates how this largely fabricated version of Roman property law shaped and continues to shape debates concerning economic growth, sustainability, and democratic participation.

Panelists: Anna di Robilant, Boston University School of Law; K-Sue Park, UCLA School of Law; Lua Yuille, Northeastern University School of Law.  Moderated by Gary Lawson, Boston University School of Law.  Lunch available in Barristers Hall at 12:00pm.  Register here.

Learn more about The Making of Modern Property: Reinventing Roman Law in Europe and its Peripheries 1789–1950 with Anna di Robilant on BU Law’s The Record podcast.

Postdoc on Local Law under Rome

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The [European Research Council] project Local Law under Rome is offering a number of Postdoctoral fellowships at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem beginning October 2024, or as soon as possible thereafter. Scholars who have received their Ph.D. after October 1st 2019 or will submit their Ph.D. no later the beginning of the Postdoctoral period are eligible to apply.

The successful candidate will be a part of a unique interdisciplinary team which will be engaged in comparative study of local legal cultures within their Roman imperial context. Together we seek to enhance the understanding of provincial legalism in its multiple manifestations.  

We are seeking experts in one (or more) of the following legal traditions, who are committed to a contextual and historical analysis of legal materials: (1) Early rabbinic law (2) Legal papyrology (3) Roman law in the provinces, or (4) Greek law. We also welcome applications by scholars of (5) Anthropology of Law who are interested in these materials.

The appointed fellow is expected to work closely with other team members. S/he will participate in the project’s ongoing activities and is expected to contribute to its collaborative outputs, produce project-related publications and provide materials for the comparative database.    

The scholarship will be granted for a maximum of 3 years. (subject to review at the end of each year). The fellow will receive a monthly stipend of approximately 11,000 NIS. Additional funding for travel will be available following approval. The fellow will have an office at the Mount Scopus Campus in Jerusalem and is expected to be present there regularly. Knowledge of Hebrew is not required.

Please submit the following documents (in one PDF file) to the e-mail address below:

• Introduction
• Letter describing your academic experience and motivation for participating in the project (2-3 pages)
• Curriculum vitae
• Abstract of the PhD dissertation
• Writing Sample: dissertation chapter or a paper that has been published or accepted for publication (no more than 30 pages)

In addition, please arrange for two Reference Letters to be sent directly.

We encourage potential applicants to contact us for additional information on the project, the
application procedure, The Hebrew University and life in Jerusalem.  Applications will be Reviewed beginning March 15, 2024.

Prof. Yair Furstenberg, Talmud Department, Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.  yair.furstenberg@mail.huji.ac.il