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As the numbers of people moving internationally increased in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, states tried more rigorously to regulate borders and counteract the problem of fugitives crossing international borders to evade arrest. This presented a legal challenge to domestic state power that increasingly defined its sovereignty on jurisdiction within borders. It is this issue and within this important era of globalization and law formation that Bradley Miller’s book examines how British North American colonies and post-Confederation Canada reacted to the problems posed by international fugitives through ideas and practices of extradition. His work goes beyond the traditional perspective of examining extradition treaties to view the practices of extradition in action, the everyday challenges states faced, and how the key concepts of sovereignty and international law were understood in relation to extradition. ...
Built to colonize
(2019)
We live in the age of commentaries. When I was a law student at Heidelberg University and wrote a take-home exam on private law in the mid-1990s, I had to survey eight commentaries on the German Civil Code. Today, students have to check twice as many commentaries, among them whoppers like the Historical-Critical Commentary and the Beck "Grand" Online-Commentary, the latter still in progress with more than 400 individual contributors – not paragraphs. Publishers and editors must use all kinds of incentives to lure new authors onto their juridical treadmills. Nobody needs an oracle to predict that most of the commentaries without a digital interface will soon vanish – sometimes to the relief of their authors, who are deeply frustrated by the lack of citations in textbooks and court cases. There is no need for the Club of Rome to issue a paper on the limits of legal commentaries. Despite all this intertextual Darwinism, the commentaries call to mind a kind of legal oasis with plenty of resources. The desert beyond buries the few remaining "grand" textbooks that traditionally developed legal principles and legal system. The commentaries can provide no guidance on these points. Their focus lies on practical details, not overarching structures. It is no wonder that mainstream contemporary German legal writing on private law is unable to master the overwhelming number of changes in the German Civil Code introduced over the last two decades. ...
Every now and again, one is overcome by a sense of utter disbelief. How can it be that some conventional narratives are still so persistent and influential in this day and age? In fact, they are so pervasive that one feels compelled to put pen to paper in order to combat them. Among these narratives, we find the tale of cultural evolution, where law plays a fundamental role as an instrument for rationalizing archaic societies. Having rejected this kind of historiography in his last essay on the early history of law (ZRG RA 127, 1–13), the late Raymond Westbrook instead postulated new paradigms. Moving in the same direction, Philipp Ruch thwarts this story of civilizing progress in a twofold manner: In his eyes, honor and vengeance are not the anthropological factors that law has to contain in order to create civilization. According to Ruch, and the main thrust of his 2016 dissertation, it was in fact law in the context of honor and vengeance that produced emotionality. ...
In the recent historiography on the canon law of the early modern Spanish Empire, legal historians have been considering many forms of normativity. Nevertheless, law still remains, and there is no reason to think otherwise, as a primary source of legal orders. In the case of canon law, many of the legislations drafted remained largely unknown due to their lack of recognitio by the Holy See and pase regio granted by the Spanish Monarch. Such texts were not printed and only circulated in manuscript form, likely resulting in a very low and uncertain degree of compliance. During the 20thcentury, gradually but fragmentally, many of these texts became known in academic publications. The book reviewed here finally gathers together in a single volume all the legislative texts drafted at church assemblies celebrated in the archdiocese of Santafé (today Bogotá) before 1625. ...
In the past 30 years, the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the modernist frame of politics have promoted the historical turn of international law. A non-Eurocentric narrative of international law is needed not only to help it go beyond the geographical and conceptual self-justification, but also to open itself to other normative orders. This presents an intellectual and normative challenge to legal historians, who increasingly explore the normative dialogue and competition in interstitial areas, such as South and Southeast Asia in their existence between the Islamic, Sinocentric and European orders. It is this issue and this important era of globalisation that Clara Kemme’s book examines roughly over the period from 1500 to 1900, in particular how the key concepts of tribute and treaty were understood through diplomatic ideas and practices in South and SoutheastAsia, how the treaty system as a product of international law became global and why it prevailed over other systems of order (2). ...
The question of Russia’s European identity has traditionally been controversial. Usually, the country is either defined as belonging to Eastern Europe in a narrower sense or, contrarily, totally excluded from the concept of Europe. From the times of Czar Peter the Great (1689–1725), Russia acquired the unquestioned status of a European power; however, despite the "enlightened" reforms of Empress Catherine the Great (1762–1796), its society remained feudal, its economy backward and its government autocratic. Right up until its collapse, the Russian Empire was decidedly less urbanized and less advanced in agriculture in comparison not only with the West but also with East-Central Europe. ...
"In the beginning all the World was America" reads the iconic opening of § 49 in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. Beyond mentioning "America", Locke’s theory and the story told by Juan Pablo Scarfi in The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas share an unsettling resemblance. The expansion of international law and the deepening of legal techniques for the purposes of US hegemony in the American hemisphere, the invasion of politics by the language of science, the double standard, one of real military and monetary interventions, and another of (usually) suave diplomatic correspondence about the advantages of pan-Americanism, all are part and parcel of The Hidden History. Moreover, around the mid-20th century the pattern extended around the entire globe. Therefore, as Scarfi elegantly suggests, the interventions in Latin America by the newly established US empire in the early 20th century had the nature of laboratory experiments. In the end, all the world was America again, but with a good number more of international organizations, institutions devoted to the scientific study of international law, and international legal norms and principles. This image, of course, simplifies tremendously the complex history of the past century. However, it summarizes the message of Scarfi’s book. ...
"Nothing is more soothing to the nerves than a detailed discussion of homage and lordship …" If William de Briwerr, fictional English knight and narrator in Alfred Duggan’s historical novel Lord Geoffrey’s Fancy, is right, then a conference held in April 2011 will have set the participants at ease. Following the call of the Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte and the conference organiser, Karl-Heinz Spieß, they had gathered to discuss the "Formation and dissemination of feudalism in the Empire and in Italy during the 12th and 13th century". The conference proceedings have now been published, and I suppose William de Briwerr would have approved of the intensity of discussion contained therein. ...
This collection edited by Dave De ruysscher, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy and Heikki Pihlajamäki considers what size or varieties of business were considered to be the best. The answer to this question depends on the time period under examination, and it also differs between jurisdictions. The chapters in the collection take a broad approach as they collectively cover a long time span and have a wide geographical spread. They consider examples from the Middle Ages, the early modern period and the 19th century. The places examined here are now in the jurisdictions of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain and England. As a whole, the chapters address some of the tension between the perceived advantages and disadvantages of big business against the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and also the limited liability corporation in comparison to the unlimited liability partnership form. The edited collection takes a deliberately integrative approach, as it combines concepts and ideas from legal studies with those of economic history, business studies and comparative political analysis. ...
In this concise volume, author and legal scholar Michael Stolleis provides an overview of the development of the modern German welfare state. Stolleis’ analysis focuses on labor law and social policy, while acknowledging the influence of economic, social, and cultural factors thereon. Origins of the German Welfare State does not emphasize a complete understanding of its subject; rather it seeks to provide insight into the development of German social policy in relation to the political/ historical eras in which it finds itself, leading to a deeper understanding of the foundations of social policy. ...