IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1330: Articulating Legal and Political Boundaries, 1050-1350, IV: Transplanting Practice

Wednesday 8 July 2020, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:	AHRC Project 'The Community of the Realm in Scotland, 1249-1424' / BA Network 'Jurisdiction, Legal Community & Political Discourse, 1050-1250'
Organisers:	Danica Summerlin, Department of History, University of Sheffield Alice Taylor, Department of History, King's College London
Moderator/Chair:	Danica Summerlin, Department of History, University of Sheffield
Paper 1330-a	Lombard Fiefs, French Lawyers, and the Catalan Fundamental Law (Language: English) Attilio Stella, Department of History, Tel Aviv University / Power & Institutions in Medieval Islam & Christendom, Spain Index terms: Law, Political Thought, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 1330-b	Medieval Custom as Comparative Law (Language: English) Ada Maria Kuskowski, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania Index terms: Law, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Political Thought
Paper 1330-c	Criminal Justice and Christian Rites: Jurisdictional Dialogue and Clash, c. 1250-1320 (Language: English) Lidia Zanetti Domingues, St Cross College, University of Oxford Index terms: Canon Law, Law, Political Thought, Religious Life
Abstract	This is the final session in a strand which aims to problematise the 'Grand Narrative' of legal development in the central Middle Ages in Europe. Traditional narratives have stressed either the growth of papal and imperial claims to pan-European legal supremacy or, the converse, how the developing polities created their own 'national laws'. This strand examines how legal communities were defined against one another (and for what purposes) and how litigants, lawyers, and politicians used and negotiated competing legal traditions to problematise the relationship between law and the nation. The fourth and final session addresses these questions through looking at 'legal transplants', a way of thinking about comparative law. They address questions such as: how far are 'local' legal customs really localised? How were papal letters incorporated into wider institutional structures of law enforcement - and what people thought about them? How far were 'common' legal works transformed through translation and localisation?