Kenneth Pennington – författare

The power of the prince versus the rights of his subjects is one of the basic struggles in the history of law and government. In this masterful history of monarchy, conceptions of law, and due process, Kenneth Pennington addresses that struggle and opens an entirely new vista in the study of Western legal tradition. Pennington investigates legal interpretations of the monarch's power from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. Then, tracing the evolution of defendants' rights, he demonstrates that the origins of due process are not rooted in English common law as is generally assumed. It was not a sturdy Anglo-Saxon, but, most probably, a French jurist of the late thirteenth century who wrote, "A man is innocent until proven guilty." This is the first book to examine in detail the origins of our concept of due process. It also reveals a fascinating paradox: while a theory of individual rights was evolving, so, too, was the concept of the prince's "absolute power." Pennington illuminates this paradox with a clarity that will greatly interest students of political theory as well as legal historians.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Gratian has long been called the father of Canon Law. This latest volume in the ongoing ""History of Medieval Canon Law"" series covers the period from Gratian's initial teaching of canon law during the 1120s to just before the promulgation of the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX in 1234.Gratian's contributions to the birth of canon law and European jurisprudence were significant: he introduced a new methodology of teaching law by using hypothetical cases and by integrating - and inserting in the texts themselves - his own comments on the canons. He also used the dialectical method to analyze legal problems that he raised in his cases. Though this methodology was first developed by Peter Abelard and others in the schools of Northern France, Gratian was the first to apply it to legal texts with the publication of his Decretum (ca. 1140). Because the Decretum was not just a collection of texts but an analysis of the sources and doctrines of ecclesiastical law, his book enjoyed immediate success across Europe. The Decretum was adopted by teachers from England to Italy and Germany to Spain. Gratian's successors later applied his methodology to the papal appellate decisions (decretals) that gradually became the foundation of canon law in the later Middle Ages.In this volume, distinguished legal historians contribute noteworthy essays on the commentaries on Gratian, the beginnings of decretal collections and commentaries on them, and the importance of conciliar legislation for the growth of canon law. There are also chapters on the influence of Roman law on canon law and the teaching of canon law in law schools.Contributors are James A. Brundage, Anne Duggan, Charles Duggan, A. Garcia y Garcia, Joseph Goering, Michael H. Hoeflich, Peter Landau, Wolfgang P. Muller, Jasonne Grabher O'Brien, Kenneth Pennington, and Rudolf Weigand.

This newest volume in the History of Medieval Canon Law series surveys the history of Byzantine and Eastern canon law. Beginning in the Patristic Age, Susan Wessel outlines the evolution of ecclesiastical law before the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.). She covers the earliest documents and councils in the Christian tradition, and concludes that the councils replaced other sources of authority as bishops moved to a more democratic model of church organisation. Heinz Ohme then offers a detailed analysis of the Greek councils and the writings of the Greek Fathers. He treats the sources of canonical material of Byzantine canon law down to the Quinisext Council (Trullanum, 692). Spyros Troianos presents a comprehensive survey of the Greek canonical collections and their compilers from the fourth to the eleventh century. In extending his coverage to 1500, Troianos provides bibliographical and biographical information about the most important Byzantine canonists who remain virtually unknown in English language literature: John Zonaras, Alexios Aristenos, and the Byzantine Gratian, Theodore Balsamon. With Hubert Kaufhold's contribution, the book also explores the wide range and variety of law in Eastern Christian communities, including Western Syrians (Jacobites), the Copts, Ethiopians, Armenians, Georgians, Nestorians, and Maronites.

Understanding the rules of procedure and the practices of medieval and early modern courts is of great importance for historians of every stripe. The authors and editors of this volume present readers with a description of court procedure, the sources for investigating the work of the courts, the jurisprudence and the norms that regulated the courts, as well as a survey of the variety of courts that populated the European landscape. Not least, the authors wish to show the relationship between the jurisprudence that governed judicial procedure and what happened in the court room.By the end of the thirteenth century, court procedure in continental Europe in secular and ecclesiastical courts shared many characteristics. As the academic jurists of the Ius commune began to excavate the norms of procedure from Justinian’s great codification of law and then to expound them in the classroom and in their writings, they shaped the structure of ecclesiastical courts and secular courts as well. These essays also illuminate striking differences in the sources that we find in different parts of Europe. In northern Europe the archives are rich but do not always provide the details we need to understand a particular case. In Italy and Southern France the documentation is more detailed than in other parts of Europe but here too the historical records do not answer every question we might pose to them. In Spain, detailed documentation is strangely lacking, if not altogether absent. Iberian conciliar canons and tracts on procedure tell us much about practicein Spanish courts. As these essays demonstrate, scholars who want to peer into the medieval courtroom, must also read letters, papal decretals, chronicles, conciliar canons, and consilia to provide a nuanced and complete picture of what happened in medieval trials. This volume will give sophisticated guidance to all readers with an interest in European law and courts.

Several different approaches to medieval legal history are evident in these articles. The first group uses law to investigate the principles that governed society, whether clearly articulated or not, and to ask how the intellectual structures of the ius commune affected the institutions of government and the presuppositions of the people. The second group of articles illustrates the importance of returning to the manuscript sources of later medieval texts, rather than relying on the early printed editions. In both parts Professor Pennington also focuses on the lives of individual jurists, contending that these provide a key to the understanding of their thought, their position in society, and the connections between the two. One of these articles is published for the first time here, while a number of others have been revised and up-dated for publication. Plusieures approches différentes à l’histoire légale du Moyen Age sont reflétées au travers de ces articles. Le premier groupe se sert de la loi pour explorer les principes qui gouvernaient la société - que ceux-ci soient clairement exprimés ou non - et afin de demander comment les structures intellectuelles de l’ius commune affectaient les institutions gouvernementales et les présuppositions du peuple. Le second groupe illustre l’importance du retour aux sources manuscrites des textes médiévaux tardifs, plutôt que de se fier à des impressions anciennes. Au travers des deux parties du volume, le professeur Pennington se concentre aussi sur la vie de certains juristes, avançant qu’il s’agit là d’une des clefs permettant de comprendre leur pensée, leur place dans la société et le rapport entre ces deux facteurs. Un des articles est publié ici pour la première fois, alors qu’un certain nombre d’autres ont été révisés et mis à jour pour leur réimpression.