Legal History

Introduction

Legal history or history of law is concerned with how law has developed throughout a certain time period and why is has changed.  It includes the  analysis of particular laws, legal institutions, individuals who operate in the legal system, and the effect of law on society.  Legal history , greatly interwoven with social and cultural history, demonstrates how law is both a reactive mechanism, responding to public problems, and an active mechanism, shaping behavior through its rules and structure in societies.

This Research Guide is intended as a starting point for research on Legal History. It provides the basic legal materials available in the Peace Palace Library, both in print and electronic format. Handbooks, leading articles, bibliographies, periodicals, serial publications and documents of interest are presented in the Selective Bibliography section. Links to the PPL Catalogue are inserted. The Library’s classification index code 13. Sources; Legal History and subject heading (keyword) Legal History are instrumental for searching through the Catalogue. Special attention is given to our subscriptions on databases, e-journals, e-books and other electronic resources. Finally, this Research Guide features links to relevant websites and other online resources of particular interest.

Bibliography

Librarian's choice

• Feminist Legal History : Essays On Women And Law

  Attuned To The social contexts within which laws are created, feminist lawyers, historians, and activists have long recognized the discontinuities and contradictions that lie at the heart of efforts to transform the law in ways that fully serve women’s interests. At its core, The nascent field of feminist legal history is driven by a commitment to uncover women’s legal agency and how women, both historically and currently, use law to obtain individual and societal empowerment. Feminist Legal Historyrepresents feminist legal historians’ efforts to define their field, by showcasing historical research and analysis that demonstrates how women were denied legal rights, how women used the law proactively to gain rights, and how, empowered by law, women worked to alter the law to try to change gendered realities. Encompassing two centuries of American history, thirteen original essays expose the many ways in which legal decisions have hinged upon ideas about women or gender as well as the ways women themselves have intervened in the law, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s notion of a legal class of gender To The deeply embedded inequities involved in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, a 2007 Supreme Court pay discrimination case.
  Tracy Thomas and Tracey Boisseau, 2011
  View this title in our OPAC
  

• The Classical Law of Nations, 1500-1800

  This papers offers an overview of the main features and evolutions of the law of nations of Early-Modern Europe. After giving a brief outlay of the general characteristics of the classical law of nations and its jurisprudence, it addresses the laws of war and peace, diplomatic law and some legal questions referring to the expansion of Europe.

  Randall C.H. Lesaffer , 2011
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• Law codes in dynastic China : a synopsis of Chinese legal history in the thirty centuries from Zhou to Qing

  In order to provide his graduate and undergraduate students with a broad overview of Chinese history in a single volume, Head (international and comparative law, U. of Kansas) enlisted Wang, an attorney in Cleveland who has full legal degrees in China and the US. He also focuses on codification as a single centralizing theme around which wind the changing law from about the 22nd century BCE to the early 20th century CE.

  John W. Head; Yanping Wang, 2005
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Links

See also

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PPL keywords

• Legal history