Concept
Legal history
Overview
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it has changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and operates in the wider context of social history. Certain jurists and historians of legal process have seen legal history 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 legal history a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth-century historians viewed legal history in a more contextualised manner – more in line with the thinking of social historians. 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. Such legal historians have tended to analyze case histories through the lens of social-science inquiry, using statistical methods to analyse class distinctions among litigants, petitioners, and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, and the number of settled cases, they have begun examining legal institutions, practices, procedures, and briefs, offering a more nuanced picture of law and society than traditional legal studies of jurisprudence, case law, and civil codes can achieve.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
And these principles are common both to natural and statute law. But there are also other divisions of law; for there is both the written and the unwritten law,--each of which is maintained by the rights of nations and the customs of our ancestors. Again, written law is divided into public law and private law. Public law is laws, resolutions of the senate, treaties; private law is accounts, covenants, agreements…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
States what Legal history is.
1. The Edicts, Constitutions, and Epistles Of The Prince, that is, of the Emperour; because the whole power of the people was in him. Like these, are the Proclamations of the Kings of England. 2. The Decrees Of The Whole People Of Rome (comprehending the Senate,) when they were put to the Question by the Senate. These were Lawes, at first, by the vertue of the Soveraign Power residing in the people; and such of them…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
States what Legal history is.
Much has been said and written for centuries past, by the practical or empirical school of politicians, in condemnation of theories founded on principles of human nature, without an historical basis; and the theorists, in their turn, have successfully retaliated on the practicalists. But we know not any thinker who, before M. Comte, had penetrated to the philosophy of the matter, and placed the necessity of…
John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism
Close in meaning to Legal history; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Outline of ancient India
- Manusmriti
- Historian
- Jurisprudence
- Byzantine Empire
- Law
- Eastern world
- Mao Zedong
- Western world
- Case law
- Nationalism
- The Times of India
- Precedent
- Pope John Paul II
- Mongol Empire
- Mughal Empire
- Rhetoric
- Roman Empire
- Roman Republic
- Roman law
- Second Vatican Council
- Social class
- Society
- British Empire
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Jurisprudence.