Legal history or the history of law Law is a system of rules, usually enforced through a set of institutions. Laws can shape or reflect politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus ticket to trading on derivatives markets. Property law defines rights and is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations Civilization is a term used to describe a certain kind of development of a human society. A civilized society is often characterized by advanced agriculture, long-distance trade, occupational specialization, and urbanism. Aside from these core elements, civilization is often marked by any combination of a number of secondary elements, including a and is set in the wider context of social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments. In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the. Among certain jurists and historians of legal process it has been seen as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts, some consider it a branch of intellectual history Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the historians listed here and entries on individual thinkers. Twentieth century historians A historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time. If the individual is concerned with events preceding written history, the have viewed legal history in a more contextualized manner more in line with the thinking of social historians Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments. In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society Civil society is composed of the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society as opposed to the force-backed structures of a state and commercial institutions of the market. Such legal historians have tended to analyze case histories from the parameters of social science The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship that explore aspects of human society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These include: anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, political science, international inquiry, using statistical methods, analyzing class distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, number of settled cases they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that give us a more complex picture of law and society A Society or a human society is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations such as social status, roles and social networks. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals sharing a distinctive culture and institutions. Without an article, the term refers either to the entirety of than the study of jurisprudence Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions. Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was focused on the first principles of the natural law, civil law, and the law, case law Case law is the reported decisions of selected appellate and other courts which make new interpretations of the law and, therefore, can be cited as precedents in a process known as stare decisis. These interpretations are distinguished from statutory law which are the statutes and codes enacted by legislative bodies; regulatory law which are and civil codes A civil code is a systematic collection of laws designed to comprehensively deal with the core areas of private law. A jurisdiction that has a civil code generally also has a code of civil procedure. In some jurisdictions with a civil code, a number of the core areas of private law that would otherwise typically be codified in a civil code may can achieve.

Ancient world

Ancient Egyptian Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and it developed over the next three millennia. Its history law, dating as far back as 3000 BC, had a civil code that was probably broken into twelve books. It was based on the concept of Ma'at Maat, Ma'at, Maāt or Mayet, thought to have been pronounced as *Muʔʕat , was the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of, characterised by tradition, rhetorical Rhetoric is the art of using language to communicate effectively. It involves three audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as the five canons of rhetoric: invention or discovery, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient speech, social equality and impartiality.^[1] By the 22nd century BC Categories: 3rd millennium BC | 22nd century BC | Centuries , Ur-Nammu Ur-Nammu founded the Sumerian 3rd dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, following several centuries of Akkadian and Gutian rule. He was succeeded by his son Shulgi, after an eighteen-year reign. His death on the battle-field against the Gutians (after he had been abandoned by his army) was commemorated in a long Sumerian poetic composition, an ancient Sumerian Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq. It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization. The Sumerian civilization spanned over 3000 years and began with the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period (mid 6th millennium BC) through the Uruk period (4th ruler, formulated the first law code The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known tablet containing a law code surviving today. It was written in the Sumerian language ca. 2100-2050 BC. Although the preface directly credits the laws to king Ur-Nammu of Ur , some historians think they should rather be ascribed to his son Shulgi, consisting of casuistic statements ("if... then..."). Around 1760 BC, King Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ˤAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer," from ˤAmmu, "paternal kinsman," and Rāpi, "healer"; ) was the sixth king of Babylon from 1792 BC to 1750 BC middle chronology (1728 BC – 1686 BC short chronology) He became the first king of the Babylonian Empire following the abdication of further developed Babylonian law Archaeological material for the study of Babylonian law is singularly extensive. So-called "contracts" exist in the thousands, including a great variety of deeds, conveyances, bonds, receipts, accounts, and most important of all, actual legal decisions given by the judges in the law courts. Historical inscriptions, royal charters and, by codifying and inscribing it in stone. Hammurabi placed several copies of his law code throughout the kingdom of Babylon as stelae A stele is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected for funerals or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased or living — inscribed, carved in relief (bas-relief, sunken-relief, high-relief, and so forth), or painted onto the slab. It can also be used as territorial markers, for the entire public to see; this became known as the Codex Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved ancient law code, created ca. 1790 BC (middle chronology) in ancient Babylon. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi. One nearly complete example of the Code survives today, inscribed on a seven foot, four inch tall diorite stele in the Akkadian language in the cuneiform script. The most intact copy of these stelae was discovered in the 19th century by British Assyriologists, and has since been fully transliterated Transliteration is the practice of converting a text from one writing system into another in a systematic way. An example of transliteration is typing an e-mail using a qwerty keyboard and sending it in a non-qwerty script and translated into various languages, including English, German and French. The Torah The term Torah , also known as the Pentateuch (Greek: penta [five] and teuchos [tool, vessel, book]), refers to the Five Books of Moses—the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts. A "Sefer Torah" (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, "book of Torah") or Torah scroll is a copy of the Torah written on parchment from the Old Testament The Old Testament is the collection of books that forms the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. The contents of the Old Testament canon vary from church to church, with the Orthodox communion having 51 books: the shared books are those of the shortest canon, that of the major Protestant communions, with 39 books is probably the oldest body of law still relevant for modern legal systems, dating back to 1280 BC. It takes the form of moral imperatives, like the Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, is a list of religious and moral imperatives that, according to the Hebrew Bible, were spoken by God (referred to using several names) to the people of Israel from the mountain referred to as Mount Sinai or Horeb, and later authored by God and given to or written by Moses in the form of two stone tablets. They and the Noahide Laws, as recommendations for a good society. Ancient Athens The city of Athens during the classical period of Ancient Greece was a notable polis (city-state) of Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Hippias. This system remained remarkably stable,, the small Greek Ancient Greece is the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. At the center of this time period is Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC, at first under Athenian city-state, was the first society based on broad inclusion of the citizenry, excluding women and the slave class. Athens had no legal science, and Ancient Greek has no word for "law" as an abstract concept.^[2] Yet Ancient Greek law Greek law has been partially compared with Roman law, and has been incidentally illustrated with the aid of the primitive institutions of the Germanic nations. It may now be studied in its earlier stages in the laws of Gortyn; its influence may be traced in legal documents preserved in Egyptian papyri; and it may be recognized as a consistent contained major constitutional innovations in the development of democracy Democracy is a political form of government where governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The term comes from the Greek: δημοκρατία - (dēmokratía) "rule of the people", which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) &.^[3]

Southern Asia

Ancient India and China represent distinct traditions of law, and had historically independent schools of legal theory and practice. The Arthashastra The Arthashastra is an ancient Indian Hindu treatise on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy which identifies its author by the names Kautilya and Viṣhṇugupta, who are traditionally identified with Chāṇakya (c. 350–283 BC), who was a scholar at Takshashila and later the prime minister of the Maurya Empire, dating from the 400 BC, and the Manusmriti Manusmṛti (Sanskrit: मनुस्मृति), also known as Mānava-Dharmaśāstra (Sanskrit: मानवधर्मशास्त्र), is the most important and earliest metrical work of the Dharmaśāstra textual tradition of Hinduism. Generally known in English as the Laws of Manu, it was first translated into English in 1794 by from 100 AD were influential treatises in India, texts that were considered authoritative legal guidance.^[4] Manu's central philosophy was tolerance and pluralism, and was cited across South East Asia.^[5] But this Hindu tradition, along with Islamic law, was supplanted by the common law when India became part of the British Empire The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a.^[6] Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore The legal system of Singapore is based on the English common law system. Major areas of law – particularly administrative law, contract law, equity and trust law, property law and tort law – are largely judge-made, though certain aspects have now been modified to some extent by statutes. However, other areas of law, such as criminal law, and Hong Kong The law of Hong Kong is based on the rule of law and the independence of the Judiciary. The constitutional framework for the legal system is provided by the Hong Kong Basic Law. Under the principle of ‘one country, two systems’, the legal framework of Hong Kong is based on the English common law, supplemented by local legislation. As a special also adopted the common law.

Eastern Asia

The eastern Asia legal tradition reflects a unique blend of secular and religious influences.^[7] Japan was the first country to begin modernizing its legal system along western lines, by importing bits of the French The Napoleonic Code — or Code Napoléon — is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified. It was drafted rapidly by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on March 21, 1804, but mostly the German The Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch is the civil code of Germany. In development since 1881, it became effective on January 1, 1900, and was considered a massive and groundbreaking project Civil Code.^[8] This partly reflected Germany's status as a rising power in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, traditional Chinese law Traditional Chinese law refers to the laws, regulations and rules used in China up to 1911, when the last imperial dynasty fell. It has undergone continuous development since at least the 11th century BC. This legal tradition is distinct from the common law and civil law traditions of the West, and to a great extent, is contrary to the concepts of gave way to westernization towards the final years of the Ch'ing dynasty in the form of six private law codes based mainly on the Japanese model of German law.^[9] Today Taiwanese law retains the closest affinity to the codifications from that period, because of the split between Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, who fled there, and Mao Zedong's communists who won control of the mainland in 1949. The current legal infrastructure in the People's Republic of China was heavily influenced by soviet Socialist law, which essentially inflates administrative law at the expense of private law rights.^[10] Today, however, because of rapid industrialization China has been reforming, at least in terms of economic (if not social and political) rights. A new contract code in 1999 represented a turn away from administrative domination.^[11] Furthermore, after negotiations lasting fifteen years, in 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization.^[12]

• Yassa of the Mongol Empire

Islamic law

One of the major legal systems developed during the Middle Ages was Islamic law and jurisprudence. A number of important legal institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islamic law and jurisprudence, One such institution was the Hawala, an early informal value transfer system, which is mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the 8th century. Hawala itself later influenced the development of the Aval in French civil law and the Avallo in Italian law.^[13].

European laws

Roman Empire

Roman law was heavily influenced by Greek teachings.^[14] It forms the bridge to the modern legal world, over the centuries between the rise and decline of the Roman Empire.^[15] Roman law, in the days of the Roman republic and Empire, was heavily procedural and there was no professional legal class.^[16] Instead a lay person, iudex, was chosen to adjudicate. Precedents were not reported, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised.^[17] Each case was to be decided afresh from the laws of the state, which mirrors the (theoretical) unimportance of judges' decisions for future cases in civil law systems today. During the 6th century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Emperor Justinian codified and consolidated the laws that had existed in Rome so that what remained was one twentieth of the mass of legal texts from before.^[18] This became known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. As one legal historian wrote, "Justinian consciously looked back to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to restore it to the peak it had reached three centuries before."^[19]

Middle Ages

Roman law was lost through the Dark Ages, but in the eleventh century AD scholars in the University of Bologna rediscovered the texts and were the first to use them to interpret their own laws.^[20] Mediæval European legal scholars began researching the Roman law and they began using its concepts^[21] and prepared the way for the partial resurrection of Roman law as the modern civil law in a large part of the world.^[22] After the Norman conquest of England, which introduced Norman and Islamic legal concepts into mediæval England, the English King's powerful judges developed a body of precedent that became the common law.^[23] In particular, Henry II instituted legal reforms and developed royal, professional courts administered by a small number of judges who lived in Westminster and traveled throughout the kingdom.^[24] Henry the II also instituted the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, which allowed for jury trials and reduced the number of trials by combat. In France, judges were based in the area they resided in, and jurors were nominated by parties to the legal dispute rather than by the sheriff.^[24] But also, a Europe wide lex mercatoria was formed, so that merchants could trade using familiar standards, rather than the many splintered types of local law. A precursor to modern commercial law, the lex mercatoria emphasised the freedom of contract and alienability of property.^[25]

Modern European law

The two main traditions of modern European law are the codified legal systems of most of continental Europe, and the English tradition based on case law.

As nationalism grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, lex mercatoria was incorporated into countries' local law under new civil codes. Of these, the French Napoleonic Code and the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch became the most influential. As opposed to English common law, which consists of massive tomes of case law, codes in small books are easy to export and for judges to apply. However, today there are signs that civil and common law are converging. European Union law is codified in treaties, but develops through the precedent laid down by the European Court of Justice.

United States

The United States legal system developed primarily out of the English common law system (with the exception of the state of Louisiana, which continued to follow the French civilian system after being admitted to statehood). Some concepts from Spanish law, such as the prior appropriation doctrine and community property, still persist in some U.S. states, particularly those that were part of the Mexican Cession in 1848.

Under the doctrine of federalism, each state has its own separate court system, and the ability to legislate within areas not reserved to the federal government.

See also

• Association of Young Legal Historians (AYLH)
• Constitution of the Roman Republic

Notes

1. ^ Théodoridés. "law". Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. * VerSteeg, Law in ancient Egypt
2. ^ Kelly, A Short History of Western Legal Theory, 5-6
3. ^ Ober, The Nature of Athenian Democracy, 121
4. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 255
5. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 276
6. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 273
7. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 287
8. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 304
9. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 305
10. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 307
11. ^ Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 309
12. ^ Farah, Five Years of China WTO Membership, 263-304
13. ^ Badr, Gamal Moursi (Spring, 1978). "Islamic Law: Its Relation to Other Legal Systems". The American Journal of Comparative Law (American Society of Comparative Law) 26 (2 [Proceedings of an International Conference on Comparative Law, Salt Lake City, Utah, February 24–25, 1977]): 187–198 [196–8]. doi:10.2307/839667. http://jstor.org/stable/839667
14. ^ Kelly, A Short History of Western Legal Theory, 39
15. ^ As a legal system, Roman law has affected the development of law in most of Western civilization as well as in parts of the Eastern world. It also forms the basis for the law codes of most countries of continental Europe ("Roman law". Encyclopaedia Britannica. ).
16. ^ Gordley-von Mehren, Comparative Study of Private Law, 18
17. ^ Gordley-von Mehren, Comparative Study of Private Law, 21
18. ^ Stein, Roman Law in European History, 32
19. ^ Stein, Roman Law in European History, 35
20. ^ Stein, Roman Law in European History, 43
21. ^ Roman and Secular Law in the Middle Ages
22. ^ Roman law
23. ^ Makdisi, John A. (June 1999). "The Islamic Origins of the Common Law". North Carolina Law Review 77 (5): 1635–1739
24. ^ ^{a b} Klerman D, Mahoney PG (2007). "Legal Origins". Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (2): 278–293. doi:10.1016/j.jce.2007.03.007. http://lawweb.usc.edu/users/dklerman/documents/Klerman.LegalOrigin.JCompEcon.pdf. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
25. ^ Sealey-Hooley, Commercial Law, 14

References

• Farah, Paolo (August 2006). "Five Years of China WTO Membership. EU and US Perspectives about China's Compliance with Transparency Commitments and the Transitional Review Mechanism". Legal Issues of Economic Integration 33 (3): 263–304. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916768.
• Barretto, Vicente (2006). Dicionário de Filosofia do Direito. Unisinos Editora. ISBN 85-7431-266-5.
• Glenn, H. Patrick (2000). Legal Traditions of the World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198765754.
• Sadakat Kadri, The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, HarperCollins 2005. ISBN 0-00-711121-5
• Kelly, J.M. (1992). A Short History of Western Legal Theory. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198762445.
• Gordley, James R.; von Mehren, Arthur Taylor (2006). An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Private Law. ISBN 9-780-52168-185-8.
• Sealy, L.S.; Hooley, R.J.A. (2003). Commercial Law. LexisNexis Butterworths.
• Stein, Peter (1999). Roman Law in European History. Cambridge University Press. pp. 32. ISBN 0-521-64372-4.
• Kempin, Jr., Frederick G. (1963). Legal History: Law and Social Change. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Further reading

• The Oxford international encyclopedia of legal history, Oxford University Press, 2009

External links

• The Legal History Project (Resources and interviews)
• Some legal history materials
• The Schoyen Collection
• The Roman Law Library by Yves Lassard and Alexandr Koptev.
• Law & Justice in Australia - online collection from the State Library of NSW
• Legal History: Evolution of Law
• Centre for Legal History - Edinburgh Law School
• Collection of Historical Statutory Material - Cornell Law Library
• Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online - University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives
• Basic Law Drafting History Online -University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives
• Alan Watson Foundation- A Group of Scholars Dedicated to the Promotion of Legal History and Comparative Law
• Senn, Marcel / Fenner, Timo / Räber, Boris /Brüngger, Thomas / Frick, Georges / Johnson, Chris Chronicle of the European history of law" [1], Zurich 2009 (German)

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