University of Transnational Business Law

Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilisations and is set in the wider context of social history. Among certain jurists and historians of legal process it has been seen as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts, some consider it a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth century historians have viewed legal history in a more contextualised manner more in line with the thinking of social historians. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society. Such legal historians have tended to analyse case histories from the parameters of social science inquiry, using statistical methods, analysing class distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analysing case outcomes, transaction costs, number of settled cases they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that give us a more complex picture of law and society than the study of jurisprudence, case law and civil codes can achieve.




Contents
 [hide] 1 Ancient world
2 Southern Asia
3 Eastern Asia
4 Islamic law
5 European laws 5.1 Roman Empire
5.2 Middle Ages
5.3 Modern European law

6 United States
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links


Ancient world[edit]

Main articles: Ma'at, Babylonian law, Ancient Greek law and Leviticus

See also: Urukagina, Hittite laws and Ostracism

Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000 BC, had a civil code that was probably broken into twelve books. It was based on the concept of Ma'at, characterised by tradition, rhetorical speech, social equality and impartiality.[1] By the 22nd century BC, Ur-Nammu, an ancient Sumerian ruler, formulated the first law code, consisting of casuistic statements ("if... then..."). Around 1760 BC, King Hammurabi further developed Babylonian law, by codifying and inscribing it in stone. Hammurabi placed several copies of his law code throughout the kingdom of Babylon as stelae, for the entire public to see; this became known as the Codex Hammurabi. The most intact copy of these stelae was discovered in the 19th century by British Assyriologists, and has since been fully transliterated and translated into various languages, including English, German and French. Ancient Athens, the small Greek city-state, was the first society based on broad inclusion of the citizenry, excluding women and the slave class. Ancient Greek has no word for "law" as an abstract concept,[2] retaining instead the distinction between divine law (thémis), human decree (nomos) and custom (díkē).[3] Yet Ancient Greek law contained major constitutional innovations in the development of democracy.[4]

Southern Asia[edit]

Main articles: Manu Smriti, Yajnavalkya Smriti, Arthashastra and Dharmasastra

See also: Classical Hindu law, Classical Hindu law in practice and Hindu law

The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution for a country, containing 444 articles, 12 schedules, numerous amendments and 117,369 words

Ancient India and China represent distinct traditions of law, and had historically independent schools of legal theory and practice. The Arthashastra, dating from the 400 BC, and the Manusmriti from 100 AD were influential treatises in India, texts that were considered authoritative legal guidance.[5] Manu's central philosophy was tolerance and pluralism, and was cited across South East Asia.[6] But this Hindu tradition, along with Islamic law, was supplanted by the common law when India became part of the British Empire.[7] Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Hong Kong also adopted the common law.

Eastern Asia[edit]

Main articles: Traditional Chinese law, Tang Code and Great Qing Legal Code

The eastern Asia legal tradition reflects a unique blend of secular and religious influences.[8] Japan was the first country to begin modernising its legal system along western lines, by importing bits of the French, but mostly the German Civil Code.[9] This partly reflected Germany's status as a rising power in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, traditional Chinese law gave way to westernisation towards the final years of the Qing dynasty in the form of six private law codes based mainly on the Japanese model of German law.[10] Today Taiwanese law retains the closest affinity to the codifications from that period, because of the split between Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, who fled there, and Mao Zedong's communists who won control of the mainland in 1949. The current legal infrastructure in the People's Republic of China was heavily influenced by soviet Socialist law, which essentially inflates administrative law at the expense of private law rights.[11] Today, however, because of rapid industrialisation China has been reforming, at least in terms of economic (if not social and political) rights. A new contract code in 1999 represented a turn away from administrative domination.[12] Furthermore, after negotiations lasting fifteen years, in 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization.[13]
Yassa of the Mongol Empire

Islamic law[edit]

Main article: Sharia

See also: Fiqh, Islamic ethics and Early reforms under Islam

One of the major legal systems developed during 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 the Hawala, an early informal value transfer system, which is mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the 8th century. Hawala itself later influenced the development of the Aval in French civil law and the Avallo in Italian law.[14]

European laws[edit]

Roman Empire[edit]

Main article: Roman law

Roman law was heavily influenced by Greek teachings.[15] It forms the bridge to the modern legal world, over the centuries between the rise and decline of the Roman Empire.[16] Roman law, in the days of the Roman republic and Empire, was heavily procedural and there was no professional legal class.[17] Instead a lay person, iudex, was chosen to adjudicate. Precedents were not reported, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised.[18] Each case was to be decided afresh from the laws of the state, which mirrors the (theoretical) unimportance of judges' decisions for future cases in civil law systems today. During the 6th century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Emperor Justinian codified and consolidated the laws that had existed in Rome so that what remained was one twentieth of the mass of legal texts from before.[19] This became known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. As one legal historian wrote, "Justinian consciously looked back to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to restore it to the peak it had reached three centuries before."[20]

Middle Ages[edit]





King John of England signs the Magna Carta
Main articles: Early Germanic law, Anglo-Saxon law and Lex mercatoria

See also: Germanic tribal laws, Visigothic Code, Early Irish law, Dōm, Blutgericht, Magna Carta and Schwabenspiegel

During the Byzantine Empire the Justinian Code was expanded and remained in force until the Empire fell, though it was never officially introduced to the West. Instead, following the fall of the Western Empire and in former Roman countries, the ruling classes relied on the Theodosian Code to govern natives and Germanic customary law for the Germanic incomers - a system known as folk-right - until the two laws blended together. Since the Roman court system had broken down, legal disputes were adjudicated according to Germanic custom by assemblies of learned lawspeakers in rigid ceremonies and in oral proceedings that relied heavily on testimony. After much of the West was consolidated under Charlemagne, law became centralised so as to strengthen the royal court system, and consequently case law, and abolished folk-right. However, once Charlemagne's kingdom definitively splintered, Europe became feudalistic, and law was generally not governed above the county, municipal or lordship level, thereby creating a highly decentralised legal culture that favoured the development of customary law founded on localised case law. However, in the 11th century, Crusaders, having pillaged the Byzantine Empire, returned with Byzantine legal texts including the Justinian Code, and scholars at the University of Bologna were the first to use them to interpret their own customary laws.[21] Mediaeval European legal scholars began researching the Roman law and using its concepts[22] and prepared the way for the partial resurrection of Roman law as the modern civil law in a large part of the world.[23] There was, however, a great deal of resistance so that civil law rivaled customary law for much of the late Middle Ages. After the Norman conquest of England, which introduced Norman legal concepts into mediaeval England, the English King's powerful judges developed a body of precedent that became the common law.[24] In particular, Henry II instituted legal reforms and developed a system of royal courts administered by a small number of judges who lived in Westminster and traveled throughout the kingdom.[25] Henry II also instituted the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, which allowed for jury trials and reduced the number of trials by combat. Louis IX of France also undertook major legal reforms and, inspired by ecclesiastical court procedure, extended Canon-law evidence and inquisitorial-trial systems to the royal courts. Also, judges no longer moved on circuits becoming fixed to their jurisdictions, and jurors were nominated by parties to the legal dispute rather than by the sheriff.[25] In addition, by the 10th century, the Law Merchant, first founded on Scandinavian trade customs, then solidified by the Hanseatic League, took shape so that merchants could trade using familiar standards, rather than the many splintered types of local law. A precursor to modern commercial law, the Law Merchant emphasised the freedom of contract and alienability of property.[26]

Modern European law[edit]

Main articles: Napoleonic code, Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch and English law

The two main traditions of modern European law are the codified legal systems of most of continental Europe, and the English tradition based on case law.

As nationalism grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, lex mercatoria was incorporated into countries' local law under new civil codes. Of these, the French Napoleonic Code and the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch became the most influential. As opposed to English common law, which consists of massive tomes of case law, codes in small books are easy to export and for judges to apply. However, today there are signs that civil and common law are converging. European Union law is codified in treaties, but develops through the precedent set down by the European Court of Justice.

United States[edit]

The United States legal system developed primarily out of the English common law system (with the exception of the state of Louisiana, which continued to follow the French civilian system after being admitted to statehood). Some concepts from Spanish law, such as the prior appropriation doctrine and community property, still persist in some US states, particularly those that were part of the Mexican Cession in 1848.

Under the doctrine of federalism, each state has its own separate court system, and the ability to legislate within areas not reserved to the federal government.

History of Lawyers


The first people who could be called lawyers were the great speakers of ancient Greece. Individual people were presumed to present a defense their own cases, but that was circumvented by having a friend better at speaking do it for you. Around the middle of the fourth century, the Greeks got rid of the request for a friend. Second, a more serious obstacle, which the Greek orators never completely overcame, was the rule that no one could take a fee to plead the case of another. This law was disregarded in practice, but was never abolished, which meant that orators could never present themselves as legal professionals or experts. They had to uphold the ruse that they were an ordinary citizen helping out a friend for free, and so they could never organize into a real profession,with professional associations and titles, like their modern lawyers. If one narrows the definition to those men who could practice the legal profession openly and legally, then the first lawyers would have to be the orators of ancient Rome A law enacted in 204 BC barred Roman advocates from taking fees, but the law was widely ignored.The ban on fees was abolished by Emperor Claudius who legalized advocacy as a profession and allowed the Roman advocates to become the first lawyers who could practice openly—but he also imposed a fee ceiling of 10,000 sesterces. This was apparently not much money; the Satires of Juvenal complain that there was no money in working as an advocate.Like their Greek contemporaries, early Roman advocates were trained in rhetoric not law, and the judges before whom they argued were also not law-trained But very early on, unlike Greece, Rome developed a class of specialists who were learned in the law, known as jurisconsults iuris consulti Jurisconsults were wealthy amateurs who dabbled in law as an intellectual hobby; they did not make their primary living from it. They gave legal opinions responsa on legal issues to all comers Roman judges and governors would routinely consult with an advisory panel of jurisconsults before rendering a decision, and advocates and ordinary people also went to jurisconsults for legal opinions. Thus, the Romans were the first to have a class of people who spent their days thinking about legal problems, and this is why their law became so "precise, detailed, and technical.The notaries or tabelliones appeared in the late Roman Empire. Like their modern-day descendants, the civil law notaries, they were responsible for drafting wills, conveyances, and contracts. They were ubiquitous and most villages had one. In Roman times, notaries were widely considered to be inferior to advocates and jurisconsults.

A Brief History of Attorneys


Formal systems of laws have existed since Hammurabi erected his code in the courtyards of temples during his reign as ruler of the Babylonian empire early in the 18th century B.C.E., and since then there has been a need for individuals to study and interpret those laws. However the history of attorneys, those who are professionals dedicated exclusively to the study, interpretation and application of the law is much more recent.

The sophists of ancient Athens were probably the first who existed as a class of people who were considered as something akin to lawyers. However, there were some societal situations that inhibited the development of a legal profession. One was an Athenian law requiring citizens to plead their own cases. This eroded over time as more and more requested friends to act as an advocate for them. More importantly, though, was the law the disallowed anyone from exacting a fee to plead for someone else, thereby preventing anyone from presenting themselves as a legal expert.

The first real development in the history of attorneys occurs in the ancient Roman Empire. During the reign of the Emperor Claudius in the first century C.E., the ban on fees is abolished and legal advocates are allowed professional status. During this time, a class of legal professionals quickly evolves and by the late fourth century a true legal profession has taken shape, dedicated to the study and practice of law, with regulations and standards in place for guidance.

During the Middle Ages, paralleling the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, the legal profession essentially disappears. Within the Church, a body of men pursued the study of Canon Law, but practice in civil law was rare, if it existed at all. By the mid-thirteenth century, the legal profession begins to reemerge. In England, the Magna Carta effectively shifts power and authority away from the monarchy and into the hands of a larger number of people. By the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, as a greater number of political states begin to evolve away from control of the Church, a more thoroughly structured concept of the legal profession begins to appear and oaths and ethical expectations, educational requirements, and fee controls were implemented, although there was no universal standard.

By the end of the American and French revolutions, a greater need for a legal profession manifests itself as the power of monarchies is being broken. With this wearing away of absolute power in the hands of a single individual, and varieties of democratic states appearing, the legal profession grows. With the concept of all citizens equal before the law being a cornerstone of democratic philosophy, a greater need for attorneys is evinced. A brief history of attorneys reveals a movement from a loose concept an advocate who offers assistance to an individual appearing before the council of the Greek city-state to a system of legal organizations, areas of specialization, licensing, government regulation, and uniformity of procedures that shapes and forms the modern legal system and the values of its practitioners.

History of law
 
History of lawThe history of law is the history of our race, and the embodiment of its experience. It is the most unerring monument of its wisdom and of its frequent want of wisdom. The best thought of a people is to be found in its legislation; its daily life is best mirrored in its usages and customs, which constitute the law of its ordinary transactions.

There never has existed, and it is entirely safe to say that there never will exist, on this planet any organization of human society, any tribe or nation however rude, any aggregation of men however savage, that has not been more or less controlled by some recognized form of law. Whether we accept the fashionable, but in this regard wholly unsupported and irrational theory of evolution that would develop civilization from barbarism, barbarism from savagery, and the existence of savage men from a simian ancestry, or whether we adopt the more reasonable theory, sustained by the uniform tenor of all history, that barbarism and savagery are merely lapses from a primordial civilization, we find man at all times and under all circumstances, so far as we are informed by the records which he has left, living in society and regulating his conduct and transacting his affairs in subordination to some rules of law, more or less fixed, and recognized by him to be binding upon him, even though he has oftentimes been in rebellion against some of their provisions.

The recognition of the existence of law outside of himself, and yet binding upon him, is inherent in man's nature, and is a necessity of his being. And this is as much as to say that the very existence of human society is dependent upon law imposed by some superior power. While from our present standpoint the ultimate finite existence is that of the individual, and all true philosophy recognizes that society exists for the individual, and not the individual for society, yet it is also true that the individual is intended to exist in society, and that he must in many things subordinate his own will to that of society, and inasmuch as society can not exist without law, it is a necessary deduction of reason that the existence of law is coeval with that of the human race.

For, if the origin of law were to be sought in compact, a similar compact would suffice to abrogate it; and if it depended on the force of the majority, the wrongfulness of disobedience to its behests would depend entirely upon its discovery and manifestation to the world.

Suppose two shipwrecked men thrown upon a desert island, far removed from all human society, far removed from all its agencies and instrumentalities for the prevention and punishment of crime, and one in wantonness kills the other, is the act any less a crime, because it may never be discovered, because it may never be reached by the avenging arm of justice, because the social compact has never been in force in that remote region of the earth. Our conscience and our common sense rebel against the inference of any distinction between such a crime and that of the ordinary murderer within the pale of civilization.

http://www.duhaime.org/LawMuseum/LawArticle-44/Duhaimes-Timetable-of-World-Legal-History.aspx

http://www.historyoflaw.info/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history


http://enlightenme.com/attorneys/

http://lawyerhistory.blogspot.com/