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IMC 2021: Sessions

Session 826: Articulating Legal and Political Boundaries, 1050-1350, IV: Pluralism and Comparison

Tuesday 6 July 2021, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:Arts and Humanities Research Council Project 'The Community of the Realm in Scotland, 1249-1424' / British Academy Project '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:Matthew McHaffie, Department of History, King's College London
Paper 826-aPopes, Legal Pluralism, and the 12th-Century Church
(Language: English)
Danica Summerlin, Department of History, University of Sheffield
Index terms: Canon Law, Ecclesiastical History, Law
Paper 826-bMedieval Custom as Comparative Law
(Language: English)
Ada Maria Kuskowski, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
Index terms: Canon Law, Law
Paper 826-cCriminal Justice and Christian Rites: Jurisdictional Dialogue and Clash, c. 1250-1320
(Language: English)
Lidia Zanetti Domingues, St Cross College, University of Oxford
Index terms: 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?