Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
Superb... A tour de force of insight and erudition The principal text divides into two parts, the first dealing with the papal revolution and its distinctive legal system of canon law and the second describing the emergence of secular legalism through its roots in feudal, manorial, mercantile, urban, and royal systems... A magnificent topping-off to the conventional [law school] curriculum. -- Los Angeles Daily Journal
Review
By demonstrating the revolutionary character of the papal reformation, Berman upsets periodizations commonly accepted by Church historians, positivists, Marxist historians, and historians of the law... Law and Revolutionis itself a revolutionary book in obliging the practitioners of many university disciplines to readjust their focus and to see in law a revolutionary cultural force. -- The Benchmark
Review
A magnificent volume, broad in scope and rich in detail; this may be the most important book on law in our generation. American Political Science Review
Review
This is a book of the first importance. Every lawyer should read it ... Clearly written and well-organized, it is a work of immense scholarship. -- American Political Science Review
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
1984 Scribes Book Award, American Bar Association
About the Author
Harold J. Berman was Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory University, and Ames Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard University.
Emory University School of Law
Table of Contents
Introduction
Law and History
Law and Revolution
The Crisis of the Western Legal Tradition
Toward a Social Theory of Law
PART I: THE PAPAL REVOLUTION AND THE CANON LAW
1. The Background of the Western Legal Tradition: The Folklaw
Tribal Law
Dynamic Elements in Germanic Law: Christianity and Kingship
Penitential Law and Its Relation to the Folklaw
2. The Origin of the Western Legal Tradition in the Papal Revolution
Church and Empire: The Cluniac Reform
The Dictates of the Pope
The Revolutionary Character of the Papal Revolution
Social-Psychological Causes and Consequences of the Papal Revolution
The Rise of the Modern State
The Rise of Modern Legal Systems
3. The Origin of Western Legal Science in the European Universities
The Law School at Bologna
The Curriculum and Teaching Method
The Scholastic Method of Analysis and Synthesis
The Relation of Scholasticism to Greek Philosophy and Roman Law
The Application of the Scholastic Dialectic to Legal Science
Law as a Prototype of Western Science
4. Theological Sources of the Western Legal Tradition
Last Judgment and Purgatory
The Sacrament of Penance
The Sacrament of the Eucharist
The New Theology: St. Anselm's Doctrine of Atonement
The Legal Implications of the Doctrine of the Atonement
Theological Sources of Western Criminal Law
The Canon Law of Crimes
5. Canon Law: The First Modern Western Legal System
The Relation of Canon Law to Roman Law
Constitutional Foundations of the Canon Law System
Corporation Law as the Constitutional Law of the Church
Limitations on Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction
6. Structural Elements of the System of Canon Law
The Canon Law of Marriage
The Canon Law of Inheritance
The Canon Law of Property
The Canon Law of Contracts
Procedure
The Systematic Character of Canon Law
7. Becket versus Henry II: The Competition of Concurrent Jurisdictions
The Constitutions of Clarendon
Benefit of Clergy and Double Jeopardy
Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in England
Writs of Prohibition
PART II: THE FORMATION OF SECULAR LEGAL SYSTEMS
8. The Concept of Secular Law
The Emergence of New Theories of Secular Government and Secular Law
John of Salisbury, Founder of Western Political Science
Theories of the Roman and Canon Lawyers
The Rule of Law
9. Feudal Law
Feudal Custom in the West Prior to the Eleventh Century
The Emergence of a System of Feudal Law
10. Manorial Law
Objectivity and Universality
Reciprocity of Rights of Lords and Peasants
Participatory Adjudication
Integration and Growth
11. Mercantile Law
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
The New System of Commercial Law
12. Urban Law
Causes of the Rise of the Modern City
The Origins of the Cities and Towns of Western Europe
Picardy (France): Cambrai, Beauvais, Laon
France: Lorris, Montauban
Normandy: Verneuil
Flanders: Saint-Omer, Bruges, Ghent
Germany: Cologne, Freiburg, Lubeck, Magdeburg
England: London, Ipswich
The Italian Cities
Guilds and Guild Law
The Main Characteristics of Urban Law
The City as a Historical Community
13. Royal Law: Sicily, England, Normandy, France
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily
The Norman State
The Personality of Roger II
The Norman Legal System
The Growth of Royal Law in Norman Italy
England
The Personality of Henry II
The English State
English Royal Law ("The Common Law")
The Science of the English Common Law
Normandy
France
The Personality of Philip Augustus
The French State
The French System of Royal Justice
French Royal Civil and Criminal Law
French and English Royal Law Compared
14. Royal Law: Germany, Spain, Flanders, Hungary, Denmark
Germany
Imperial Law
The personality and vision of Frederick Barbarossa
The imperial peace statutes (Landfrieden)
The Mirror of Saxon Law (Sachsenspiegel)
The Law of the Principalities
Spain, Flanders, Hungary, Denmark
Royal Law and Canon Law
Conclusion
Beyond Marx, Beyond Weber
Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgements
Index