The Studies in Legal History Series at Cambridge University Press has released by Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France, by Ada Maria Kuskowski (University of Pennsylvania). A description from the Press:
Custom was fundamental to medieval legal practice. Whether in a property
dispute or a trial for murder, the aggrieved and accused would go to
lay court where cases were resolved according to custom. What custom
meant, however, went through a radical shift in the medieval period.
Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, custom went from being a
largely oral and performed practice to one that was also conceptualized
in writing. Based on French lawbooks known as coutumiers, Ada Maria
Kuskowski traces the repercussions this transformation – in the form of
custom from unwritten to written and in the language of law from elite
Latin to common vernacular – had on the cultural world of law.
Vernacular Law offers a new understanding of the formation of a new
field of knowledge: authors combined ideas, experience and critical
thought to write lawbooks that made disparate customs into the field
known as customary law.
Advance praise:
"This book is a marvel, mixing erudition and imagination. Describing
the cultural upheaval of the writing of custom, Ada Kuskowski opens new
doors to the understanding of medieval law." --
James Q. Whitman,
"By
studying the first coutumiers as a coherent whole, with a focus on
language and manuscripts and an eye toward recent scholarship in legal
history generally, Kuskowski defines a subject every bit as complex,
interesting, and influential as the medieval Roman and canon laws that
overshadow it in the historiography." --
Adam Kosto
More information is available here.
-- Karen Tani
