Entanglements in legal history

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This volume offers a comprehensive overview of historical processes that inspire theoretical reflections on legal transfers, transplants, and the reception and assimilation of laws and norms. Legal historians worldwide analyze their traditions and present case studies to explore the entangled histories of law. The first section, ‘Traditions of Transnational Legal History,’ critiques achievements and shortcomings in legal historical research, particularly within postcolonial and global contexts. It includes critical accounts of ‘European Legal History,’ ‘Codification history,’ the emergence of ‘Hindu Law,’ and the methodologies of Comparative Law. The second section, ‘Empires and Law,’ highlights legal histories shaped in imperial contexts, such as treaties from the ancient Roman Empire analyzed through ‘narrative transculturation.’ It also examines transnational institutions in the Early Modern Spanish Empire and the hybridization of legal frameworks in a multilingual environment. The focus shifts to the ‘craftsmen of transfer’ who used comparative law to develop German colonial law. The final section, ‘Analyzing transnational law and legal scholarship in the 19th and early 20th century,’ presents seven case studies that reflect on entangled legal histories, covering topics like civil law codifications in Latin America, constitutionalism, transnational legal orders, and the influence of legal scholarship on criminology, all wh