Open Access

Thomas Duve

• Thirty years ago, in 1983, Harold Berman’s Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition was first published. His work had an enormous impact on legal scholarship all over the world. Many aspects of his central thesis – that there was something akin to a "papal revolution" in eleventh century Europe; that this "revolution" set a pattern for future epochs of transformation; that the special relation between Religion and Law was a distinct feature of the "Western Legal Tradition" – were largely discussed by legal historians, historians and social scientists. Others, like his "Social Theory of Law", received less attention. Although there had been strong criticism by scholars, especially medievalists, on some aspects of Berman’s work, it has become a standard reference in scholarly writings, not least outside of Europe. Since its appearance in 1983, Law and Revolution has been translated into German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Lithuanian. Twenty years later, in 2003, with his project entitled Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition, Berman presented the second volume of what was thought to be a trilogy. Twenty years had gone by, the political world order had changed, but Berman’s main point, the importance of analyzing the role of Religion and Law, and the specific constellation of these two modes of normative thought, had gained new currency. In 2007, Harold J. Berman passed away, but not without having opened his historical and legal thought to the challenges of a globalized world. ...