An
English-language version of Thieves in
Court: The Making of the German Legal System in the Nineteenth Century by Rebekka
Habermas, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen has come out, translated by
Kathleen Mitchell Dell’Orto. The original German version was published in 2008.
From Cambridge University Press:
From the seemingly
insignificant theft of some bread and a dozen apples in nineteenth century
rural Germany, to the high courts and modern-day property laws, this
English-language translation of Habermas' Diebe
vor Gericht explores how everyday incidents of petty stealing and the
ordinary people involved in these cases came to shape the current legal system.
Habermas draws from an unusual cache of archival documents of theft cases,
tracing the evolution and practice of the legal system of Germany through the
nineteenth century. This close reading, relying on approaches of legal
anthropology, challenges long-standing narratives of legal development, state
building, and modern notions of the rule of law. Ideal for legal historians and
scholars of modern German and nineteenth-century European history, this
innovative volume steps outside the classic narratives of legal history and gives
an insight into the interconnectedness of social, legal and criminal history.
Praise
includes:
"In a
brilliant study of 'jurisdictional politics', Rebekka Habermas delivers a fresh
and sophisticated account of the social grounding, cultural performance, and
public staging that shaped a reformed legal system in the wake of the 1848
revolutions. Challenging not only the celebratory liberal story of the
progressive march of the rule of law but also the social historian's
class-based critique of the rule of property, she derives the rise of 'the
modern legal order' from an elaborate process of cultural conflict and everyday
transactions." -Geoff Eley
Full
information is available here.
