Legal history or the history of law is the study of how

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

has

evolved Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

and why it has changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of

civilisations A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of State (polity), a state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and Symbol, symbolic systems of communication beyond natural language, natur ...

and operates in the wider context of social history. Certain jurists and historians of legal process have seen legal history as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts; some consider legal history a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth-century

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

s viewed legal history in a more contextualised manner - more in line with the thinking of

social historians Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...

to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.case histories from the parameters of

social-science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the o ...

inquiry, using statistical methods, analysing

class Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...

distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, and numbers of settled cases, they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that gives a more complex picture of law and society than the study of

jurisprudence Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning a ...

case law Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a l ...

and civil codes can achieve.

Ancient world

Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000 BC, was based on the concept of

Ma'at Maat or Maʽat ( Egyptian: mꜣꜥt /ˈmuʀʕat/, Coptic: ⲙⲉⲓ) refers to the ancient Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Ma'at was also the goddess who personified these concepts, and regul ...

, and was characterised by tradition,

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

al speech, social equality and impartiality. By the 22nd century BC,

Ur-Nammu Ur-Nammu (or Ur-Namma, Ur-Engur, Ur-Gur, Sumerian: , ruled c. 2112 BC – 2094 BC middle chronology, or possibly c. 2048–2030 BC short chronology) founded the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, following several centuries ...

, an ancient

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...

ian ruler, formulated the first extant

law code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the cod ...

, consisting of casuistic statements ("if... then..."). Around 1760 BC,

King Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian: ; ) was the sixth Amorite king of the Old Babylonian Empire, reigning from to BC. He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health. During his reign, he conquered Elam and the city-states ...

further developed

Babylonian law Babylonian law is a subset of cuneiform law that has received particular study due to the large amount of archaeological material that has been found for it. So-called "contracts" exist in the thousands, including a great variety of deeds, co ...

, by codifying and inscribing it in stone. Hammurabi placed several copies of his law code throughout the kingdom of Babylon as

stelae A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

, for the entire public to see; this became known as the

Codex Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammu ...

. The most intact copy of these stelae was discovered in the 19th century by British Assyriologists, and has since been fully

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

and translated into various languages, including English, German and French. Ancient Greek has no single word for "law" as an abstract concept, retaining instead the distinction between divine law (''thémis''), human decree (''nomos'') and custom (''díkē''). Yet

Ancient Greek law Ancient Greek law consists of the laws and legal institutions of Ancient Greece. The existence of certain general principles of law is implied by the custom of settling a difference between two Greek states, or between members of a single state, ...

contained major

constitutional A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these prin ...

innovations in the development of

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which people, the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choo ...

Southern Asia

Ancient India According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

represent distinct traditions of law, and had historically independent schools of legal theory and practice. The '' Arthashastra'', dating from the 400 BC, and the ''

Manusmriti The ''Manusmṛiti'' ( sa, मनुस्मृति), also known as the ''Mānava-Dharmaśāstra'' or Laws of Manu, is one of the many legal texts and constitution among the many ' of Hinduism. In ancient India, the sages often wrote thei ...

'' from 100 BCE were influential treatises in India, texts that were considered authoritative legal guidance. Manu's central philosophy was tolerance and pluralism, and was cited across South East Asia. During the

Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent The Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent mainly took place from the 13th to 17th centuries. Earlier Muslim conquests include the invasions into what is now modern-day Pakistan and the Umayyad campaigns in India in eighth century and res ...

, sharia was established by the Muslim sultanates and empires, most notably

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

's Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, compiled by emperor

Aurangzeb Muhi al-Din Muhammad (; – 3 March 1707), commonly known as ( fa, , lit=Ornament of the Throne) and by his regnal title Alamgir ( fa, , translit=ʿĀlamgīr, lit=Conqueror of the World), was the sixth emperor of the Mughal Empire, ruling ...

and various scholars of Islam. After British colonialism, Hindu tradition, along with Islamic law, was supplanted by the common law when India became part of the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

. Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

also adopted the common law.

Eastern Asia

The eastern Asia legal tradition reflects a unique blend of secular and religious influences. Japan was the first country to begin modernising its legal system along western lines, by importing bits of the French, but mostly the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Civil Code. This partly reflected Germany's status as a rising power in the late nineteenth century. Similarly,

traditional Chinese law Traditional Chinese law refers to the laws, regulations, and rules used in China up to 1911, when the last imperial dynasty fell. It has undergone continuous development since at least the 11th century BCE. This legal tradition is distinct from ...

gave way to westernisation towards the final years of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

in the form of six private law codes based mainly on the Japanese model of German law. Today Taiwanese law retains the closest affinity to the codifications from that period, because of the split between Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, who fled there, and

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

's communists who won control of the mainland in 1949. The current legal infrastructure in the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

was heavily influenced by soviet

Socialist law Socialist law or Soviet law denotes a general type of legal system which has been (and continues to be) used in socialist and formerly socialist states. It is based on the civil law system, with major modifications and additions from Marxis ...

, which essentially inflates administrative law at the expense of private law rights. Today, however, because of rapid industrialisation China has been reforming, at least in terms of economic (if not social and political) rights. A new contract code in 1999 represented a turn away from administrative domination. Furthermore, after negotiations lasting fifteen years, in 2001 China joined the

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and ...

. *

Yassa Yassa (alternatively: ''Yasa'', ''Yasaq'', ''Jazag'', ''Zasag'', mn, Их засаг, ''Ikh Zasag'') was the oral law code of the Mongols declared in public in Bukhara by Genghis Khan'' de facto'' law of the Mongol Empire even though the "law" ...

of the

Mongol Empire The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest contiguous land empire in history. Originating in present-day Mongolia in East Asia, the Mongol Empire at its height stretched from the Sea of Japan to parts of Eastern Europe, ...

Canon law

The legal history of the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

is the history of

Catholic canon law The canon law of the Catholic Church ("canon law" comes from Latin ') is "how the Church organizes and governs herself". It is the legal system, system of laws and canon law, ecclesiastical legal principles made and enforced by the Hierarchy of the ...

, the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West. Canon law originates much later than

Roman law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the ''Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor J ...

but predates the evolution of modern European civil law traditions. The cultural exchange between the secular (Roman/Barbarian) and ecclesiastical (canon) law produced the

jus commune ''Jus commune'' or ''ius commune'' is Latin for "common law" in certain jurisdictions. It is often used by civil law jurists to refer to those aspects of the civil law system's invariant legal principles, sometimes called "the law of the land" ...

and greatly influenced both civil and common law. The history of Latin

canon law Canon law (from grc, κανών, , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is th ...

can be divided into four periods: the ''jus antiquum'', the ''jus novum'', the ''jus novissimum'' and the ''Code of Canon Law''.Della Rocca, ''Manual of Canon Law,'' pg. 13, #8 In relation to the Code, history can be divided into the ''jus vetus'' (all law before the Code) and the ''jus novum'' (the law of the Code, or ''jus codicis''). Eastern canon law developed separately. In the twentieth century, canon law was comprehensively codified. On 27 May 1917, Pope Benedict XV codified the 1917 Code of Canon Law.

John XXIII Pope John XXIII ( la, Ioannes XXIII; it, Giovanni XXIII; born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, ; 25 November 18813 June 1963) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 28 October 1958 until his death in June 19 ...

, together with his intention to call the

Second Vatican Council The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the , or , was the 21st ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. The council met in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome for four periods (or sessions), each lasting between 8 and ...

, announced his intention to reform canon law, which culminated in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, promulgated by

John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

on 25 January 1983. John Paul II also brought to a close the long process of codifying the Eastern Catholic canon law common to all 23

sui juris ''Sui iuris'' ( or ) also spelled ''sui juris'', is a Latin phrase that literally means "of one's own right". It is used in both secular law and the Catholic Church's canon law. The term church ''sui iuris'' is used in the Catholic '' Code of Ca ...

Eastern Catholic Churches on 18 October 1990 by promulgating the

Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches The ''Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches'' (CCEC; la, Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium, abbreviated CCEO) is the title of the 1990 codification of the common portions of the canon law for the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in the Catholic ...

Islamic law

One of the major legal systems developed during the Middle Ages was

Islamic law Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the ...

and

. A number of important legal institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of

and

. One such institution was the ''

Hawala Hawala or hewala ( ar, حِوالة , meaning ''transfer'' or sometimes ''trust''), also known as in Persian, and or in Somali, is a popular and informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money ...

'', an early

informal value transfer system An informal value transfer system (IVTS) is any system, mechanism, or network of people that receives money for the purpose of making the funds or an equivalent value payable to a third party in another geographic location, whether or not in the s ...

, which is mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the 8th century. ''Hawala'' itself later influenced the development of the ''Aval'' in

French civil law The Law of France refers to the legal system in the French Republic, which is a civil law legal system primarily based on legal codes and statutes, with case law also playing an important role. The most influential of the French legal codes is ...

and the ''Avallo'' in Italian law.

European laws

Roman Empire

was heavily influenced by Greek teachings. It forms the bridge to the modern legal world, over the centuries between the rise and decline of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...

.As a legal system, Roman law has affected the development of law in most of

Western civilization Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''. image:Plato Pio-Cle ...

as well as in parts of the

Eastern world The Eastern world, also known as the East or historically the Orient, is an umbrella term for various cultures or social structures, nations and philosophical systems, which vary depending on the context. It most often includes at least ...

. It also forms the basis for the law codes of most countries of continental Europe (). Roman law, in the days of the

Roman republic The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kin ...

and

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

, was heavily procedural and there was no professional legal class. Instead a lay person, ''iudex'', was chosen to adjudicate. Precedents were not reported, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised. Each case was to be decided afresh from the laws of the state, which mirrors the (theoretical) unimportance of judges' decisions for future cases in civil law systems today. During the 6th century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Emperor

Justinian Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovat ...

codified and consolidated the laws that had existed in Rome so that what remained was one twentieth of the mass of legal texts from before. This became known as the ''

Corpus Juris Civilis The ''Corpus Juris'' (or ''Iuris'') ''Civilis'' ("Body of Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, issued from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor. It is also sometimes referred ...

''. As one legal historian wrote, "Justinian consciously looked back to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to restore it to the peak it had reached three centuries before."

Middle Ages

During the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

the

Justinian Code The ''Corpus Juris'' (or ''Iuris'') ''Civilis'' ("Body of Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, issued from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor. It is also sometimes referred ...

was expanded and remained in force until the Empire fell, though it was never officially introduced to the West. Instead, following the fall of the Western Empire and in former Roman countries, the ruling classes relied on the

Theodosian Code The ''Codex Theodosianus'' (Eng. Theodosian Code) was a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was established by Emperor Theodosius II and his co-emperor Valentinian III on 26 March 429 ...

to govern natives and Germanic

customary Custom, customary, or consuetudinary may refer to: Traditions, laws, and religion * Convention (norm), a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted rules, norms, standards or criteria, often taking the form of a custom * Norm (social), a r ...

law for the Germanic incomers - a system known as folk-right - until the two laws blended together. Since the Roman court system had broken down, legal disputes were adjudicated according to Germanic custom by assemblies of learned

lawspeaker A lawspeaker or lawman ( Swedish: ''lagman'', Old Swedish: ''laghmaþer'' or ''laghman'', Danish: ''lovsigemand'', Norwegian: ''lagmann'', Icelandic: , Faroese: '' løgmaður'', Finnish: ''laamanni'', kl, inatsitinuk) is a unique Scandina ...

s in rigid ceremonies and in oral proceedings that relied heavily on

testimony In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. Etymology The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the Latin word ''testis'', referring to the notion of a disinterested third-party witness. ...

. After much of the West was consolidated under

Charlemagne Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...

, law became centralized so as to strengthen the royal court system, and consequently

, and abolished folk-right. However, once Charlemagne's kingdom definitively splintered, Europe became feudalistic, and law was generally not governed above the county, municipal or lordship level, thereby creating a highly decentralized legal culture that favored the development of customary law founded on localized case law. However, in the 11th century,

crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

, having pillaged the Byzantine Empire, returned with Byzantine legal texts including the Justinian Code, and scholars at the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...

were the first to use them to interpret their own customary laws. Medieval European legal scholars began researching the

and using its concepts and prepared the way for the partial resurrection of Roman law as the modern civil law in a large part of the world. There was, however, a great deal of resistance so that civil law rivaled customary law for much of the late Middle Ages. After the Norman conquest of England, which introduced

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

legal concepts into medieval England, the English King's powerful judges developed a body of

precedent A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great valu ...

that became the

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...

. suggests that there may have been some importation of Islamic concepts as well, but others have shown that occasional similarities are more likely coincidence than causal. In particular, Henry II instituted legal reforms and developed a system of royal courts administered by a small number of judges who lived in

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...

and traveled throughout the kingdom. Henry II also instituted the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, which allowed for jury trials and reduced the number of

trials by combat Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to settle accusations in the absence of witnesses or a confession in which two parties in dispute fought in single combat; the winner of the ...

Louis IX Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, was King of France from 1226 to 1270, and the most illustrious of the Direct Capetians. He was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the d ...

of France also undertook major legal reforms and, inspired by ecclesiastical court procedure, extended Canon-law evidence and inquisitorial-trial systems to the royal courts. Also, judges no longer moved on circuits becoming fixed to their jurisdictions, and jurors were nominated by parties to the legal dispute rather than by the sheriff. In addition, by the 10th century, the

Law Merchant ''Lex mercatoria'' (from the Latin for "merchant law"), often referred to as "the Law Merchant" in English, is the body of commercial law used by merchants throughout Europe during the medieval period. It evolved similar to English common law as ...

, first founded on Scandinavian trade customs, then solidified by the Hanseatic League, took shape so that merchants could trade using familiar standards, rather than the many splintered types of local law. A precursor to modern commercial law, the Law Merchant emphasised the freedom of contract and alienability of property.

Modern European law

The two main traditions of modern European law are the codified legal systems of most of continental Europe, and the English tradition based on case law. As

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, ''lex mercatoria'' was incorporated into countries' local law under new civil codes. Of these, the French Napoleonic Code and the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch became the most influential. As opposed to English

, which consists of massive tomes of case law, codes in small books are easy to export and for judges to apply. However, today there are signs that civil and common law are converging. European Union law is codified in treaties, but develops through the

set down by the European Court of Justice.

African law

The African law system is based on common law and civilian law. Many legal systems in Africa were based on ethnic customs and traditions before colonization took over their original system. The people listened to their elders and relied on them as mediators during disputes. Several states didn't keep written records, as their laws were often passed orally. In the Mali Empire, the

Kouroukan Fouga According to the '' Epic of Sundiata'', Kouroukan Fouga or Kurukan Fuga was the constitution of the Mali Empire created after the Battle of Krina (1235) by an assembly of nobles to create a government for the newly established empire. According t ...

, was proclaimed in 1222–1236 AD as the official constitution of the state. It defined regulations in both constitutional and civil matters. The provisions of the constitution are still transmitted to this day by

griot A griot (; ; Manding: jali or jeli (in N'Ko: , ''djeli'' or ''djéli'' in French spelling); Serer: kevel or kewel / okawul; Wolof: gewel) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician. The griot is a repos ...

s under oath. During colonization, authorities in Africa developed an official legal system called the Native Courts. After colonialism, the major faiths that stayed were Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism.

United States

The

United States legal system The law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as va ...

developed primarily out of the English common law system (with the exception of the state of

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

, which continued to follow the French civilian system after being admitted to statehood). Some concepts from

Spanish law The Law of Spain is the legislation in force in the Kingdom of Spain, which is understood to mean Spanish territory, Spanish waters, consulates and embassies, and ships flying the Spanish flag in democratically elected institutions. Characteristi ...

, such as the prior appropriation doctrine and community property, still persist in some US states, particularly those that were part of the Mexican Cession in 1848. Under the doctrine of federalism, each state has its own separate court system, and the ability to legislate within areas not reserved to the federal government.

Notes

References

* * * * *

Sadakat Kadri Sadakat Kadri (born 1964 in London) is a lawyer, author, travel writer and journalist. One of his foremost roles as a barrister was to assist in the prosecution of former Malawian president Hastings Banda. As a member of the New York Bar he has w ...

, ''The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson'', HarperCollins 2005. * * * * * *Kempin, Jr., Frederick G. (1963). ''Legal History: Law and Social Change''. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

External links

The Legal History Project (Resources and interviews)

The Roman Law Library
by Yves Lassard and Alexandr Koptev.
CHD Centre for Legal History
- Faculty of Law, University of Rennes 1
Centre for Legal History
- Edinburgh Law School
The European Society for History of Law

Collection of Historical Statutory Material
- Cornell Law Library
Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online
- University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives
Basic Law Drafting History Online
-University of Hong Kong Libraries, Digital Initiatives {{DEFAULTSORT:Legal History Jurisprudence Academic disciplines History of science by discipline