Earlier this fall we noted that only three of the fifty contributors to Oxford Handbook of European Legal History were women. Knowing that there are numerous women scholars whose voices would enrich a conversation on European Legal History, we have decided to spotlight some of them in a series of posts. As our colleagues at the “Women Also Know History” media platform note, there are “concrete way[s] to address explicit and implicit gender bias in public and professional perceptions of historical expertise.” We hope that this series of interviews will be one of them. (H/t: AHA Member Spotlight series.)
We begin the series with Saskia Lettmaier, Professor of Law at Kiel University in Germany.
We begin the series with Saskia Lettmaier, Professor of Law at Kiel University in Germany.
Alma Maters:
- Oxford University, B.A., 2002
- Harvard Law School, LL.M., 2003
- Bamberg University, PhD, 2007
- Erlangen University, First State Exam in Law, 2009
- Harvard Law School, S.J.D., 2015
- Regensburg University, Habilitation, 2016
Fields of
Interest: All private law subjects, with a particular emphasis on family and
succession law; legal history, with a particular emphasis on the early modern
and modern periods in England and Continental Europe; comparative and private
international law; law and culture
Career path: I
have had a fairly unusual career path. I never planned to be a law professor.
And I certainly did not plan every step on the way to becoming one. I was born
in Germany, and I completed my secondary school education there. However
(perhaps because I was an avid Jane Austen reader during my teenage years), I
have always had a strong penchant for the Anglo-American world. This is what first
brought me to England to study law at Oxford, and this is what subsequently brought
me to Harvard to study an Americanized version of the common law. While an
LL.M. student at Harvard, I had the good fortune to enroll in a course on wills
and trusts with Charlie Donahue. For my LL.M. paper, I drafted two wills for my grandmother on the
alternative hypotheses first that she was a resident of Germany and second that
she was a resident of Massachusetts. The main body of my work consisted
in comparing the results both from a planner’s and a client’s perspective. This
LL.M. drafting exercise fixed my interest in family and succession law as well
as my interest in comparative law. And it introduced me to Charlie Donahue, who
ended up being my doctoral supervisor and a tremendous mentor long after my
LL.M. studies were finished.
What do you like
most about where you live and work: Kiel is a city in the north of Germany, and
it reminds me a lot of England and also of Boston. People here have a Nordic
attitude and a Nordic sense of humor. Plus, Kiel is situated right on the
Baltic Sea. I am teaching at a university that recruits its students mainly
from the Bundesland (i.e. the German state
of Schleswig-Holstein, of which Kiel is the capital city). As a result, university
life here has a very earthy, heartfelt atmosphere. Add to that a bunch of very
supportive colleagues, always keen on collaborative endeavors, and it’s really
heaven on earth.
What projects are
you currently working on? My research focuses on the history as well as the
contemporary practice of family and succession law. I am equally committed to
both. When it comes to contemporary issues, I am trying to devise a more
equitable approach to balancing private autonomy and protection for the weaker
party in spousal and other in-family contracting. As a legal historian, I tend
to explore the history of family law, and in particular the history of marriage
law. I generally do so through a comparative perspective, with Germany and
England as my main comparators. Right now, I am writing a book chapter on
marriage law during the inter-war period in England and Germany.
Have your
interests evolved since finishing your studies? I dare say they have become more
tailored and more narrowly focused, but the big picture was there early on: my
techique is historical-comparative, and my favourite subject matter is the
history of family law and the history of wills and trusts.
What’s the most
fascinating thing you have ever found while doing your research? My most fascinating find dates from my
doctoral research on breach-of-promise actions in 19th-century England. I was
investigating a very famous mid-century breach-of-promise case brought by one
Mary Smith against a noble individual, and I was anxious to know what became of
Miss Smith after the trial (which she resoundingly lost) had ended—no easy task,
considering what a common name she had. I was greatly helped by her
grandfather’s will (discovered at a record office), which disclosed that she
had married one Kosciusko Hyde Kent Newbolt (not a common name by anyone’s standards).
From there it was an easy task to trace her to her death in Liverpool.
Is there an
article, book, film, or website that you would recommend to LHB readers? I strongly
recommend the British Newspaper Library, which offers an extensive collection
of British and overseas newspapers in print, on microfilm and as digital copies.
Much of the content has recently become available online via the British
Newspaper Archive. It’s a treasure trove for externalist legal historians like
myself, who like to study law in its social context.
What have you
found to be the most surprising thing about academic life? I never thought I
would have as much freedom to pick and choose my research topics, and I never
thought that I would enjoy it so much.
