Historical and Legal Analysis

After much of the West was consolidated under Charlemagne, law was centralized to strengthen the royal court system and, consequently, jurisprudence and abolish popular law. However, after the final fragmentation of Charlemagne`s kingdom, Europe became feudal and law was generally not regulated above the county, municipality or dominion level, creating a highly decentralized legal culture that fostered the development of customary law based on localized jurisprudence. In the 11th century, after plundering the Byzantine Empire, the Crusaders returned with Byzantine legal texts, including the Justinian Codex, and scholars at the University of Bologna were the first to use them to interpret their own customary laws. [30] Medieval European jurists began to study Roman law and use its concepts[31] and paved the way for the partial resurrection of Roman law as modern civil law in much of the world. [32] However, there was great resistance, so civil law competed with customary law for much of the late Middle Ages. One of the most important legal systems developed in the Middle Ages was Islamic law and jurisprudence. A number of important legal institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islamic law and jurisprudence. One such institution was hawala, an informal system of value transfer mentioned in Islamic jurisprudences as early as the 8th century. Hawala himself later influenced the development of the Aval in French civil law and the Avallo in Italian law.

[23] Roman law was strongly influenced by Greek doctrine. [24] It is the bridge to the modern legal world, in the centuries between the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. [25] Roman law was highly procedural at the time of the Roman Republic and the Empire, and there was no professional legal class. [26] Instead, a layman, iudex, was chosen to judge. Precedents have not been reported, so any jurisdiction that has developed has been obscured and almost not recognized. [27] Each case should be redecided from state laws, reflecting the (theoretical) insignificance of judges` decisions for future cases in today`s civil justice systems. During the 6th century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian codified and consolidated the laws that had existed in Rome, so that only one-twentieth of the mass of legal texts of the past remained. [28] This has been called the Corpus Juris Civilis. As one legal historian wrote, “Justinian consciously looked back at the golden age of Roman law and sought to bring it back to the peak it had reached three centuries earlier.” [29] After the Norman conquest of England, which introduced Norman legal concepts into medieval England, the powerful judges of the English king developed a precedent that became common law.

In particular, Henry II introduced legal reforms and developed a system of royal courts administered by a small number of judges living in Westminster and travelling throughout the kingdom.[33] [34] Henry II. He also introduced the Clarendon Assizes in 1166, which allowed jury trials and reduced the number of trials per battle. Louis IX de France also undertook important legal reforms and, inspired by ecclesiastical trials, extended the canonical system of evidence and procedure of inquisition to the royal courts. In addition, judges no longer went around in circles about their jurisdiction, and jurors were appointed by the litigants and not by the sheriff. [34] Moreover, in the 10th century, the legal merchant, first based on Scandinavian trade customs and then solidified by the Hanseatic League, took shape, allowing merchants to act according to familiar standards, rather than the many fragmented types of local law. A forerunner of modern commercial law, the merchant of law emphasizes freedom of contract and the alienability of property. During the Byzantine Empire, the Justinian Codex was expanded and remained in force until the fall of the Empire, although it was never officially introduced to the West.[35] Instead, after the fall of the Western Empire and in the former Roman lands, the ruling classes relied on the Theodosian Code to regulate the natives and Germanic customary law for Germanic immigrants—a system known as popular law—until the two laws merged. Since the collapse of the Roman judicial system, legal disputes have been settled according to Germanic custom by assemblies of learned jurists in strict ceremonies and oral hearings that relied heavily on witness testimony.

12. The historical analysis of the law set out in this response owes much to the work of Robert Cover. Cover not only emphasized the practicality of law and jurisprudence, but also subjected past and present legal practices to historical research analysis. See, for example, Cover, Robert, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven, 1975)Google Scholar and “Violence and the Word”, Yale Law Journal 95 (1986): 1601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In addition, Cover`s historical analysis of the Fugitive Slave Act in the pre-war North has influenced criticism of several current legal practices. including South African apartheid and the death penalty in the United States. See, for example: Dugard, John, Human Rights and the South African Legal Order (Princeton, 1978)Google Scholar; Dyzenhaus, David, Hard Cases in Wicked Legal Systems: South African Law in the Perspective of Legal Philosophy (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; Dubber, Markus Dirk, “The Pain of Punishment,” Buffalo Law Review 44 (1996): 545.Google Scholar You need responsive and experienced experts who can successfully piece together historical facts and respond effectively and discreetly to requests for research and analysis. The East Asian legal tradition reflects a unique blend of secular and religious influences. [14] Japan was the first country to begin modernizing its Western-style legal system by importing parts of French, but especially the German Civil Code. [15] This partly reflected Germany`s status as a rising power in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, during the last years of the Qing Dynasty, traditional Chinese law gave way to Westernization in the form of six private law systems based primarily on the Japanese model of German law.

[16] Today, Taiwanese law has the greatest affinity with the codifications of this period, due to the split between Chiang Kai-shek`s nationalists, who took refuge there, and Mao Zedong`s communists, who took control of the mainland in 1949.