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Welcome to this site on legal history. Rechtshistorie is one of two Dutch words for legal history; rechtsgeschiedenis is the other one. These two words rightly stress the many aspects of legal history: the legal history does not exist, legal histories do. This site tries to provide introductions to the history of a number of legal systems and periods. For some part information will come from my earlier homepages. Law and history do touch each other, and the picture of a bridge symbolises the connection between them. I try to offer a kind of bridge to events and news concerning legal history on my legal history blog, with regular postings and links to online journals, other blogs – for example those of law libraries – and a congress calendar. I send short messages and notices on X/Twitter.

Already early on some people were interested in the history of law. In the Digestae, the sixth century anthology of the classical Roman lawyers, we find fragments from a book on the history of Roman law. For the Middle Ages the Italian lawyer Odofredus de Denariis offers a thirteenth century example of a writer who regularly made remarks about his colleagues from a century before his time. In the sixteenth century antiquarian interests for the history of law developed side by side with an interest for a better understanding of Roman law by looking at its history and integrating the results into modern law. In the nineteenth century the new wave of academic scientific research touched the discipline of legal history as well. The twentieth century saw a deeper treatment of existing interests and a vast widening of the interests in periods, countries and aspects of law. This development is reflected in a great variety of websites and online databases. Therefore a substantial part of this website is devoted to digital collections, libraries and archives.

Legal history is interesting and important for several reasons: it offers a form of comparative law in time, it relates facts, developments and institutions to each other and puts them into perspective. Legal history brings into view not just courts of law and the judiciary, but also legislation, juridical education, the development of doctrine and legal institutions. In some countries the legal cases at stake get most attention, in other countries the consistency of the legal system itself is a paramount factor. Apart from civil or private law, state law, penal law and legal procedure, many other branches of law call for attention. The Catholic church, one of the world’s longest existing institutions, has developed its own legal system, called canon law, and this shows in its long history both influences of law created by the state, and its own influence on many aspects of law.

Legal history can show the gaps between aspirations about law and the day-to-day reality of legal practice. However, legal reality is not unchangeable, and legal history can show you the problems of legal change, its impact and the need for careful preparation of such changes. The history of law, its uses and abuse also contribute definitely to cultural history.

If you want to ask questions about this website, report broken links, suggest additions or to comment on the information presented here, you can send an email to info [at] rechtshistorie.nl. Especially alerts about broken links are welcome!

Portals for legal history

For the field of legal history several portal sites exist. The portals mentioned here help to guide your search for documentation and information concerning legal history.

  • Legal History on the Web – the website of the Triangle Legal History Seminar, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, offers among many things a whole page on portals for legal history
  • Portail Numérique de l’Histoire du Droit – this website is mainly concerned with France, but brings you also to a wide range of international websites
  • Portal Iberoamericano de Historia del Derecho, Universidad de Girona – a portal to legal history for the Iberian peninsula and Latin America; interface in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and English
  • History of Internatonal Law – Research Guide, Peace Palace Library, The Hague – a guide in a nutshell, but certainly useful, with a concise bibliography, librarian’s reading tips, links, and a selection of similar more specialised guides (Islamic law, comparative law)
  • Resources for Doing Legal History, American Society for Legal History – a generous selection of links for American and British legal history, and as a bonus also some links for other periods and countries

The Society for the History of Old Dutch Law hadt its own portalsite with much information on this subject, but technical problems forced an unexpected end to it. As for now you can find this society at the websiteof its journal Pro Memorie. You can also check here the page on the history of Dutch law.