Course Catalog

An investigation of disputing and dispute processing in Iceland of the saga age with side glances at pre-Conquest England and some contemporary pre-industrial, kin-based cultures. Course materials include translations of Icelandic family sagas and early law; there are also assigned readings in secondary historical and anthropological works. No laptop usage is permitted during class sessions. There will be periodic quizzes and a final research paper. There will be no final examination.

• Type: Upper Class

This course examines the early history of the English Common Law and explores various approaches to legal history. We will study both medieval documents and key works of modern historical writing in order to obtain an overall picture of the chronology, processes, and causes of legal development. Following an introduction to the history of the period (no prior study of history is required) and to the use of historical sources, a combination of chronological and thematic approaches will be adopted. Key issues will be the role of royal authority in legal development; the impact of changes in literacy; changes in the nature of legal knowledge and thought; the separation of legal from other social norms; the degree to which legal change works by its own internal logic.

• Type: Upper Class

This course explores the development of the Civilian legal tradition — one of the world’s major legal traditions today — with a particular focus on its early history and its later uses in early modern and modern contexts. Working with a reverse chronology, the first third of the course analyses how the Civil Law tradition was shaped and molded by European lawyers and jurists during the ‘long’ nineteenth century. We then move back in time to survey the roles played by arguments from Roman civil law in early modern colonial expansion, with a specific focus on the establishment of Spanish and Portuguese rule in the Americas. In the second half of the course we move back in time again in order to analyze the making of Roman law itself, providing an overview of fundamental Roman legal concepts and critically questioning the extent to which the Civil Law tradition — which we examined in the first half of the course — was built upon ancient Roman legal ideas and sources. Through lectures, as well as discussion of key primary sources and secondary materials, the course will introduce the following key topics: the sources and methods of the (Roman) Civil law tradition, including case law, equity and the role played by legal experts (‘jurists’) in scientific legal development; the rise of codes, codification and the interpretation of statute law; the distinction between private and public law; the concept of jurisdiction; how legal concepts such as contracts, torts etc. change and develop through time; and the uses to which Roman legal arguments have been put in order to justify colonial conquest, both ancient and modern. No prior study of history or the civilian legal tradition is required.

• Type: Upper Class