Heikki Pihlajamäki - Böcker

European law, including both civil law and common law, has gone through several major phases of expansion in the world. European legal history thus also is a history of legal transplants and cultural borrowings, which national legal histories as products of nineteenth-century historicism have until recently largely left unconsidered. The Handbook of European Legal History supplies its readers with an overview of the different phases of European legal history in the light of today's state-of-the-art research, by offering cutting-edge views on research questions currently emerging in international discussions. The Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter both nationally and systemically. Unlike traditional European legal histories, which tend to concentrate on "heartlands" of Europe (notably Italy and Germany), the Europe of the Handbook is more versatile and nuanced, taking into consideration the legal developments in Europe's geographical "fringes" such as Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The Handbook covers all major time periods, from the ancient Greek law to the twenty-first century. Contributors include acknowledged leaders in the field as well as rising talents, representing a wide range of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise and research agendas.

The culture of the ius commune has been a unifying element of European and Western legal civilization. As shown by several recent studies, the influence of ius commune extended much farther than its traditional core area. This volume discusses the expansion and changes of ius commune in three significant corners of Europe, which in the classical narrative either totally or partially were left out of the picture: England, Scandinavia, and Venice. The study goes beyond the traditional question of the influence of ius commune in comparing the different constellations of normativity and legal pluralism in these regions. It investigates how not only ius commune but also other forms of normativity – such as customary law, written norms, and legal practice – were used and applied, and how they circulated. The approach helps create new narratives as to how the relationship between centers and peripheries in Europe evolved in the early modern period. These new narratives are built from bottom to top; thus, they are based on concrete source information, and they focus on the learned legal systems and their connection to the local legal sources. The collection further looks into the circulation of professors and doctors, students, and legal texts, starting from the idea that a theoretical understanding of the forms of normativity can emerge only through concrete, multidisciplinary research recognizing the tensions between global legal unification and differentiation. The book will be essential reading for researchers and academics in Legal History, Law and Religion, Comparative Legal Studies, and Early Modern History.Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

This volume surveys 150 law books of fundamental importance in the history of Western legal literature and culture. The entries are organized in three sections: the first dealing with the transitional period of fifteenth-century editions of medieval authorities, the second spanning the early modern period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and the third focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors are scholars from all over the world. Each ‘old book’ is analyzed by a recognized specialist in the specific field of interest. Individual entries give a short biography of the author and discuss the significance of the works in the time and setting of their publication, and in their broader influence on the development of law worldwide. Introductory essays explore the development of Western legal traditions, especially the influence of the English common law, and of Roman and canon law on legal writers, and the borrowings and interaction between them.The book goes beyond the study of institutions and traditions of individual countries to chart a broader perspective on the transmission of legal concepts across legal, political, and geographical boundaries. Examining the branches of this genealogical tree of books makes clear their pervasive influence on modern legal systems, including attempts at rationalizing custom or creating new hybrid systems by transplanting Western legal concepts into other jurisdictions.

This volume brings together nine chapters by specialist legal historians that address the topic of the scale and size of companies, in both legal and economic history. The bundled texts cover different periods, from the Middle Ages, the Early Modern Period, to the nineteenth century. They analyse the historical development of basic features of present-day corporations and of other company types, among them the general and limited partnership. These features include limited liability and legal personality. A detailed overview is offered of how legal concepts and mercantile practice interacted, leading up to the corporate characteristics that are so important today. Contributors are: Anja Amend-Traut, Luisa Brunori, Dave De ruysscher, Stefania Gialdroni, Ulla Kypta, Bart Lambert, Annamaria Monti, Carlos Petit, and Bram Van Hofstraeten.

The contributions of Understanding the Sources of Early Modern and Modern Commercial Law: Courts, Statutes, Contracts, and Legal Scholarship show the wealth of sources which historians of commercial law use to approach their subject. Depending on the subject, historical research on mercantile law must be ready to open up to different approaches and sources in a truly imaginative and interdisciplinary way. This, more than many other branches of law, has always been largely non-state law. Normative, ‘official’, sources are important in commercial law as well, but other sources are often needed to complement them. The articles of the volume present an excellent assemblage of those sources. Anja Amend-Traut, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy, Dave De ruysscher, Olivier Descamps, Ricardo Galliano Court, Eberhard Isenmann, Mia Korpiola, Peter Oestmann, Heikki Pihlajamäki, Edouard Richard, Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, Guido Rossi, Bram Van Hofstraeten, Boudewijn Sirks, Alain Wijffels, and Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz.