Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In the metahistorical account of the path to modernity, law and judiciary occupied a distinct place. The modern world was marked by states with unitary law codes and centralized court systems. Justice was a state monopoly. Law was rational and systematic. Penal offenses were investigated and prosecuted by state agents, and even private conflicts had to be taken to courts. The medieval situation was antithetical to the modern. Then law was plural, overlapping, and predominantly local. Courts were weak or nonexistent; laws customary; justice in the hands of venal lords or prelates, or even in the hands of private individuals altogether (feud and revenge). Law was anything but rational, being instead highly ritualized and formal, with modes of proof including torture or ordeal. Historical research celebrated those developments (for example, founding of the law school of Bologna, ecclesiastical abolition of ordeals at the Fourth Lateran Council, Magna Carta) and those individuals (for example, Henry II of England, Emperor Frederick II, Louis IX of France, Gratian, Accursius) that contributed to the rationalizing, centralizing, and professionalizing of law, courts, and the state. This contrast between medieval and modern lives on. It is at the heart of the professional identity formation of lawyers and judges to this day. The role of much of legal history has been to legitimize current ... log in or subscribe to read full text