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The Monetary Logic of Early Medieval Conflict Resolution
Volume Editors: , , and
This volume offers the first comprehensive account of the monetary logic that guided the payment of wergild and blood money in early medieval conflict resolution. In the early middle ages, wergild played multiple roles: it was used to measure a person’s status, to prevent and end conflicts, and to negotiate between an individual and the agents of statehood. This collection of interlocking essays by historians, philologists and jurists represents a major contribution to the study of law and society in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages.

Contributors are Lukas Bothe, Warren Brown, Stefan Esders, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Paul Hyams, Tom Lambert, Ralph W. Mathisen, Rob Meens, Han Nijdam, Lisi Oliver, Harald Siems, Karl Ubl, and Helle Vogt.

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This book describes the development of the criminal law of evidence in the Netherlands, France and Germany between 1750 and 1870. In this period the development occurred that the so-called system of legal proofs was replaced with the (largely) free evaluation of the evidence. The system of legal proofs, which had functioned since the late middle ages, consisted of a set of strict evidentiary rules which predetermined when a judge could convict someone. In this book an explanation is given of the question why between 1750 and 1870 the strict evidentiary rules were replaced with the free evaluation of the evidence. The thesis of this research is that the reform was induced by a change in the underlying epistemological and political-constitutional discourses which together provided the ideas which inspired a significant reform of the criminal law of evidence.
Translator:
First published in Italian in 1990, Fiammetta Palladini’s ground-breaking study of Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) remains one of the most important discussions of the subject to date. Now available in English for the first time, Palladini's book cuts through the existing field of Pufendorf studies, laying bare its inherited templates and tacit assumptions. Palladini is thus able to peel back the ‘Grotian’ commentary in which the great thinker had been shrouded, revealing a Pufendorf well-known in the 1680s—a formidable and dangerous natural jurist and political theorist—but doubly obscured in the 1980s and still today, by a philosophical history that flies too high to see him, and by a commentary literature that too often does not like what it sees. David Saunders’ lucid translation carries Palladini’s argument into English with maximum fidelity.

Translation of: Samuel Pufendorf discepolo di Hobbes. Per una reinterpretazione del giusnaturalismo moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990).
Author:
In Ἐντολή (mandatum) in den Basiliken Hylkje de Jong deals with the way the Byzantine jurists of the early period (6th and early 7th century) and later period (11th and 12th century) dealt with the law of mandate as they found this in respectively Justinian’s compilation and in the 9th century Basilica. Commonly characterised as consistent Byzantine dogmatics, the remarks of these Byzantine jurists appear to be in reality individual approaches, coloured by each jurist’s own methodology of interpreting.
Based upon the Basilica texts, the law of mandate is set out thematically: the mandate’s object, the liability of parties, actions, remunerations. De Jong proves convincingly that the Byzantine remarks provide a better understanding of Justinian Roman law.

In der Studie Ἐντολή (mandatum) in den Basiliken beschäftigt sich Hylkje de Jong mit der Art und Weise, wie sich die byzantinischen Juristen des 6. und frühen 7. aber auch des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts mit dem Auftragsrechts befassten, das sie in Justinians Kompilation bzw. in den Basiliken des 9. Jahrhunderts fanden. Die Äußerungen dieser byzantinischen Juristen werden in der Regel als einheitliche byzantinische Rechtslehre aufgefasst, erweisen sich aber in Wirklichkeit als individuelle Ansätze, die von der Methodik des jeweiligen Juristen geprägt und gefärbt sind.
Basierend auf den Basilikentexten wird das Auftragsrecht thematisch dargestellt: Gegenstand des Mandats, Haftung der Parteien, Klagen, Vergütungen etc. Überzeugend weist De Jong nach, dass die byzantinischen Darlegungen ein besseres Verständnis des römischen Rechts von Justinian vermitteln.
The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625-1800 offers innovative studies on the development of the law of nations after the Peace of Westphalia. This period was decisive for the origin and constitution of the discipline which eventually emancipated itself from natural law and became modern international law.

A specialist on the law of nations in the Swiss context and on its major figure, Emer de Vattel, Simone Zurbuchen prompted scholars to explore the law of nations in various European contexts. The volume studies little known literature related to the law of nations as an academic discipline, offers novel interpretations of classics in the field, and deconstructs ‘myths’ associated with the law of nations in the Enlightenment.
Winner of the 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award

In Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity, Valeria Vegh Weis rehabilitates the contributions and the methodology of Marx and Engels to analyze crime and punishment through the historical development of capitalism (15th Century to the present) in Europe and in the United States. The author puts forward the concepts of over-criminalization and under-criminalization to show that the criminal justice system has always been selective. Criminal injustice, the book argues, has been an inherent element of the founding and reproduction of a capitalist society. At a time when racial profiling, prosecutorial discretion, and mass incarceration continue to defy easy answers, Vegh Weis invites us to revisit Marx and Engels’ contributions to identify socio-economic and historic patterns of crime and punishment in order to foster transformative changes to criminal justice. The book includes a Foreword by Professor Roger Matthews of Kent University, and an Afterword written by Professor Jonathan Simon of the University of California, Berkeley.
Volume Editors: and
This collection of essays gathers contributions from leading international lawyers from different countries, generations and angles with the aim of highlighting the multifaceted history of international law. This volume questions and analyses the origins and foundations of the international legal system. A particular attention is devoted to Hugo Grotius as one of the founding fathers of the law of nations. Several contributions further question the positivist tradition initiated by Vattel and endorsed by scholars of the 19th Century. This immersion in the intellectual origins of international law is enriched by an inquiry into the practice of the law of nations, including its main patterns and changing evolution as well as the role of non-western traditions and the impact of colonization.

Le présent ouvrage réunit les contributions de juristes internationaux reconnus en vue d’éclairer les multiples facettes de l’histoire du droit international public. L’ouvrage analyse et questionne les origines et les fondements de l’ordre juridique international. Une attention toute particulière est dédiée à Hugo Grotius l’un des pères fondateurs du droit international. D’autres contributions questionnent également la tradition positiviste initiée par Vattel et confortée par la doctrine du 19ème siècle. Cette immersion dans les origines doctrinales du système juridique international est enrichie par l’étude de la pratique du droit international public, son évolution ainsi que le rôle des traditions non-occidentales et l’impact de la colonisation.
Author:
Tradition in Social Science is the social philosophy written early in life by the jurisprudent who became the preeminent public law jurist in France in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Maurice Hauriou. His work remains prominent in theorizing European Community as well as in Latin American jurisprudence. His studies concern three areas of research: legal theory, social science, and philosophy. In this book Hauriou first focuses on the object and method of the social sciences in a preliminary chapter. The main text is devoted first to a philosophy of history that uses the growth objectively in fraternity, liberty and equality as the criterion for progress; and next to the subjective elements of progress, namely, the recognition of a “pessimistic individualism” in which failure in conduct is to be expected, but is rectified by social institutions. This part closes with the dynamizing of his philosophy of history by evolution and alternation between two phases of social development, namely, middle ages and renaissances. The second part is the philosophy of social science built around social matter, where the dynamic of imitation is the motive force, and three social networks—positive, religious, and metaphysical—specify its consequences. The last of these, the political fabric, is provided with a final chapter of its own. The main doctrinal device that Hauriou developed for use in law was his theory of the institution; this is developed for the first time in the present work.
This book shows that Hauriou’s positivist and pragmatic jurisprudence and social theory, as well as their application to the study of institutions, is satisfactorily supported by his idealistic philosophy. The nine chapters first locate Hauriou’s influences, then situate his disciplinary methodologies within methodology in general. The central chapters concern each of the three methodologies in turn.
Perspectives on State Power and Violence
Volume Editor:
The topic of “evil” means different things depending upon context. For some, it is an archaic term, while others view it as a central problem of ethics, psychology, or politics. Coupled with state power, the problem of evil takes on a special salience for most observers. When governments do evil –in whatever way we define the term – the scale of harm increases, sometimes exponentially. The evils of state violence, then, demand our attention and concern. Yet the linkage of evil with state power does not resolve the underlying question of how to understand the concepts that we invoke when we use the term. Instead, the question becomes what evil means in the context of and in relation to state power.
The fifteen essays in this book bring multiple perspectives to bear on the problems of state-sponsored evil and violence, and on the ways in which law enables or responds to them. The approaches and conclusions articulated by the various contributors sometimes complement and sometimes stand in tension with each other, but as a whole they contribute to our ongoing effort to understand the characteristics and workings of state power, and our need to grapple with the harm it causes.