Law and Revolution, the Formation of the Western Legal Tradition

Law and Revolution, the Formation of the Western Legal Tradition PDF

Author: Harold J. Berman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 9780674020856

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The roots of modern Western legal institutions and concepts go back nine centuries to the Papal Revolution, when the Western church established its political and legal unity and its independence from emperors, kings, and feudal lords. Out of this upheaval came the Western idea of integrated legal systems consciously developed over generations and centuries. Harold J. Berman describes the main features of these systems of law, including the canon law of the church, the royal law of the major kingdoms, the urban law of the newly emerging cities, feudal law, manorial law, and mercantile law. In the coexistence and competition of these systems he finds an important source of the Western belief in the supremacy of law. Written simply and dramatically, carrying a wealth of detail for the scholar but also a fascinating story for the layman, the book grapples with wideranging questions of our heritage and our future. One of its main themes is the interaction between the Western belief in legal evolution and the periodic outbreak of apocalyptic revolutionary upheavals. Berman challenges conventional nationalist approaches to legal history, which have neglected the common foundations of all Western legal systems. He also questions conventional social theory, which has paid insufficient attention to the origin of modem Western legal systems and has therefore misjudged the nature of the crisis of the legal tradition in the twentieth century.

Law and Revolution

Law and Revolution PDF

Author: Harold J. Berman

Publisher: Belknap Press

Published: 1983-09-30

Total Pages: 676

ISBN-13:

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The roots of modern Western legal institutions and concepts go back nine centuries to the Papal Revolution, when the Western church established its political and legal unity and its independence from emperors, kings, and feudal lords. Out of this upheaval came the Western idea of integrated legal systems consciously developed over generations and centuries. Harold J. Berman describes the main features of these systems of law, including the canon law of the church, the royal law of the major kingdoms, the urban law of the newly emerging cities, feudal law, manorial law, and mercantile law. In the coexistence and competition of these systems he finds an important source of the Western belief in the supremacy of law. Written simply and dramatically, carrying a wealth of detail for the scholar but also a fascinating story for the layman, the book grapples with wide-ranging questions of our heritage and our future. One of its main themes is the interaction between the Western belief in legal evolution and the periodic outbreak of apocalyptic revolutionary upheavals. Berman challenges conventional nationalist approaches to legal history, which have neglected the common foundations of all Western legal systems. He also questions conventional social theory, which has paid insufficient attention to the origin of modern Western legal systems and has therefore misjudged the nature of the crisis of the legal tradition in the twentieth century.

Law and Revolution, II

Law and Revolution, II PDF

Author: Harold Joseph Berman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 9780674020863

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Harold Berman's masterwork narrates the interaction of evolution and revolution in the development of Western law. This new volume explores two successive transformations of the Western legal tradition under the impact of the sixteenth-century German Reformation and the seventeenth-century English Revolution, with particular emphasis on Lutheran and Calvinist influences. Berman examines the far-reaching consequences of these apocalyptic political and social upheavals on the systems of legal philosophy, legal science, criminal law, civil and economic law, and social law in Germany and England and throughout Europe as a whole. Berman challenges both conventional approaches to legal history, which have neglected the religious foundations of Western legal systems, and standard social theory, which has paid insufficient attention to the communitarian dimensions of early modern economic law, including corporation law and social welfare. Clearly written and cogently argued, this long-awaited, magisterial work is a major contribution to an understanding of the relationship of law to Western belief systems.

The Ecology of Law

The Ecology of Law PDF

Author: Fritjof Capra

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2015-10-05

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1626562083

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Winner, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Politics/Current Events: A systems theorist and a legal scholar present a new paradigm for protecting our planet. This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: The world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Fritjof Capra, physicist, systems theorist, and bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show that this obsolete worldview has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good. Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on Earth that better addresses many of the economic and social crises we face today. This is a visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet. “Thoughtful . . . The authors propose a philosophy and jurisprudence that is deeply radical—upending centuries of Western tradition and culture—but possibly crucial to solving looming environmental problems.” —Publishers Weekly

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe PDF

Author: Ruth Mazo Karras

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-02-11

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0812208854

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In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. However, historians have long recognized that medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law and legal procedure. This book makes the case that one cannot understand the era's cultural trends without considering the profound development of law.

Legal Transplants

Legal Transplants PDF

Author: Alan Watson

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 082031532X

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In Legal Transplants, one of the world's foremost authorities on legal history and comparative law puts forth a clear and concise statement of his controversial thesis on the way that law has developed throughout history. When it was first published in 1974, Legal Transplants sparked both praise and outrage. Alan Watson's argument challenges the long-prevailing notion that a close connection exists between the law and the society in which it operates. His main thesis is that a society's laws do not usually develop as a logical outgrowth of its own experience. Instead, he contends, the laws of one society are primarily borrowed from other societies; therefore, most law operates in a society very different from the one for which it was originally created. Utilizing a wealth of primary sources, Watson illustrates his argument with examples ranging from the ancient Near East, ancient Rome, early modern Europe, Puritan New England, and modern New Zealand. The resulting picture of the law's surprising longevity and acceptance in foreign conditions carries important implications for legal historians and sociologists. The law cannot be used as a tool to understand society, Watson believes, without a careful consideration of legal transplants. For this edition, Watson has written a new afterword in which he places his original study in the context of more recent scholarship and offers some new reflections on legal borrowings, law, and society.

Law and Counterrevolution

Law and Counterrevolution PDF

Author: Pavlov, Serhii S.

Publisher: Serhii Pavlov, Yurincom Inter

Published: 2023-08-28

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13: 9666678179

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The book presents the author’s understanding of the concept of legal tradition. In modern academic law there is no clear definition of the concept of legal tradition, but at the same time there are many works that consider and use this phenomenon. Based on the research by Harold Berman – “Law and Revolution. The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition”, this book is the attempt to theoretically formulate the concept of legal tradition. The central theme of the work is one of the supreme values of law – the human right to life. The Right to human life had a different value in law in each historical era. This regularity in different historical types of legal order is explained as a consequence of different points of equilibrium of positive law in the Western legal tradition. In this regard, on the one hand, the Harold Berman’s study is an empirical key for revealing the theoretical construction of the phenomenon of the Western legal tradition. On the other hand, the empirical verification of this concept is taking place in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In the context of this dual empiricism, the work shows that the axiology of right to human life has always been the subject of the equilibrium of positive law. The book examines the hypothesis that the Western legal tradition has entered a new era of its genesis – the Age of Confrontation. The hallmark of the new era is the confrontation between the doctrinal, normative, and reflective autonomy of law, which have a destructive effect on legal values and values of law. In contrast to Harold Berman’s six revolutions of law, the phenomenon of counterrevolution of law is considered by the researcher as a form of dissipative dynamics of positive Law. Attention is drawn to the fact that, unlike the Age of Formation, renewal and total transformation of positive law are possible in a no-revolutionary way. The proposed hypothesis that the Age of Confrontation of the Western legal tradition come to end in a result of the harmonization of the normative, reflective, and doctrinal autonomy of law. This monograph may be of interest to specialists in the field of philosophy, sociology, legal theory, and case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Also, the book may be of interest to anyone who has studied the Western legal tradition.

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