The Origins of the European Legal Order

This is a translation of Alle radici del mondo giuridico europeo published in Italy in 1994.

Maurizio Lupoi (Author), Adrian Belton (Translated by)

9780521032957, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 January 2007

656 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm, 0.972 kg

'Cambridge University Press are to be congratulated on publishing a translation of a large-scale work of continental scholarship on the Middle Ages … The Origins of the European Legal Order … is full of fascinating detail, and is vigorously argued.' Medium Aevum

This translation of Alle radici del mondo giuridico europeo published in Italy in 1994 is a comprehensive reappraisal of thinking on the common structural features of the various European jurisdictions. Professor Lupoi argues the case for the existence of an earlier system of common law as far back as between the sixth and eleventh centuries. Based on vulgar Roman legal culture and various Germanic customs, this law was codified in Latin and survives in modified form in modern English common law. Legal sources from all over Europe are compared and discussed. Cultures formerly considered to be 'barbarian' emerge in a different light and common strands are seen to emerge.

List of abbreviations
1. The early Middle Ages: a comparative approach
2. A historical and institutional profile of the Roman empire in the fourth and fifth centuries
3. Excursus I: 'barbarians'
4. Historical and institutional profiles of the 'new dominations'
5. Excursus II: the days of the week
6. Excursus III: Anglo-Saxon charters
7. Consensus by assembly
8. Excursus IV: authority and consensus in judicial decisions
9. Public allegiance
10. Excursus V: the Anglo-Saxon writ
11. Private allegiance
12. Open legal systems
13. Excursus VI: textual 'coincidences' in documentary forms
Chronology of popes and sovereigns
Appendix of sources
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Comparative law [LAM]