This wide-ranging collection of essays reflects the manifold scholarly interests of legal historian Charles Donahue, whose former students engage here with questions related to foundational Roman law concepts, the impact of the law on women and families in medieval and early modern Europe, the intersection of law and religion, and the echoes of legal ideas on later developments in American law and in world literature and philosophy. From the monks of Metz to the book sellers of colonial Boston, from fourteenth-century English charters to the writings of Faust, these essays invite you to experience law at once learned and lived.
Contributors are: Charles Bartlett, Anton Chaevitch, Wim Decock, Rowan Dorin, Sally E. Hadden, Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch, Nikitas E. Hatzimihail, Samantha Kahn Herrick, Daniel Jacobs, Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Amalia D. Kessler, Saskia Lettmaier, Sara McDougall, Stuart M. McManus, Elizabeth W. Mellyn, Bharath Palle, Ryan Rowberry, Carol Symes, James R. Townshend, and John Witte, Jr.
Elizabeth Papp Kamali, J.D. (2007), Harvard Law School, Ph.D. (2015), University of Michigan, is the Austin Wakeman Scott Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and author of
Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2019).
Saskia Lettmaier, S.J.D. (2015), Harvard Law School, is Professor on the Faculty of Law, University of Kiel, Hamburg, and author of
Broken Engagements: The Action for Breach of Promise of Marriage and the Feminine Ideal, 1800-1940 (Oxford, 2010), as well as
Spouses, Church, and State: Marriage Law in England and Protestant Germany from the Reformation until the Close of the Nineteenth Century (Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming).
Nikitas E. Hatzimihail, S.J.D. (2002), Harvard Law School, is Professor in the Department of Law, University of Cyprus and author of
Preclassical Conflict of Laws (Cambridge, 2023).
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Elizabeth Papp Kamali and Saskia Lettmaier
Part 1 Roman Law 1 Towards a Taxonomy of Witnesses in Roman Law
James R. Townshend
2 “Si Bononiensis”: Glossators and the Conflicts of Law
Nikitas Hatzimihail
3 Roman Property, Corporate Personhood, and the Politics of Natural Law in Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy:
Venice, Baldus, and the res communes omnium
Charles Bartlett
4 Abandonment,
animus and
animalia ferae naturae in Hugo Grotius’
De iure belli ac pacis Daniel Jacobs
5 “For the Sake of Mental Health and Mutual Peace”:
The Transactio-
Agreement in Early Modern Law and Theology Wim Decock
Part 2 Women, Marriage, and the Law 6 Consent in Medieval English Marriage and Misconduct
Elizabeth Papp Kamali
7 Written Law and Practice: Realities for Women in Bas Languedoc in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch
8 Sex with Nuns in Medieval France
Sara McDougall
9
Oikos and
Oikonomika: The Early Modern Family as a Matrix of Modern Economics
John Witte
10 Legal and Factual Uncertainty in a Seventeenth-Century French Marriage Case
Saskia Lettmaier
11 Marriage Law between East and West:
Charles Maigrot’s Dissertatio de Matrimonio Sinarum
Stuart M. McManus
Part 3 Medieval and Early Modern Law 12 Getting Ahead in a Twelfth-Century City:
The Ambitious Monks of Saint-Clément, Metz Samantha Kahn Herrick
13 The Papal Constitution
Execrabilis (1317) and Clerical Justices in the English Royal Courts
Ryan Rowberry
14 Dangerous Dreams: Le Songe du Vergier
and the Expulsion of Jews from Fourteenth-Century France Rowan Dorin
15 Suicide in Early Modern Italy
Elizabeth W. Mellyn
16 The “Desire of Deeds”: On Cherishing Medieval English Charters
Carol Symes
Part 4 American Legal History 17 Lawyers and Their Book Collections: Notes from the Eighteenth Century
Sally E. Hadden
18 The American Importation of the Comparative Accusatorial/Inquisitorial Divide: Francis Lieber’s Failed Transplant and Its Early Twentieth-Century Resurgence
Amalia D. Kessler
Part 5 Literature and Legal Theory 19 Faust: Goethe’s Guide to Legal Progress
Anton Chaevitch
Appendix: Reflections from Former Students Appendix 1 When Giants Roamed: A Reflection
Thomas S. Burns
Appendix 2 De magistro eruditissimo et beneficentissimo: A Reflection
Mary Elizabeth Basile Chopas
Appendix 3 The Teachings of Charles Donahue on the Middle Ages from the Perspective of a Student of Mexican Legal History: A Reflection
William Suárez-Potts
Appendix 4 Chi Squares, Chant, and Charlie: A Reflection
Claire Valente
Bibliography
Index
This book will be of interest to specialists in Roman law; medieval and early modern canon, civil, and common law; and academics interested in the intersection between law and gender, literature, and philosophy.