Welcome to the forum historiae iuris!

The fundamental transformation of information and communication technologies has also opened up a wealth of new opportunities and possibilities for legal history research and teaching: sources and literature are now accessible in a variety and ease that was unimaginable just a few years ago, and the range of digitally available content is expanding almost daily. At the same time, new forms of communication have made our world smaller. Legal history, like many other discourses, has become more globalized.

This is one of the reasons why legal history debates and discourses are increasingly shaped by international perspectives. This has been accompanied by the continuous expansion of the fields of legal history research and, to some extent, of legal history teaching. Taken together, these developments have given the history of law as an academic discipline a new dynamism in research and teaching, the full impact of which is not yet fully foreseeable. However, the World Wide Web has become a central area for the exchange of legal history research. Even in the teaching of legal history, the possibilities of new technologies seem to be gradually being used more and more. The ongoing developments in digital humanities and, more recently, in artificial intelligence – and more specifically Large Language Models – are also likely to have an impact.

These phenomena will be addressed in the forum historiae iuris (FHI). The journal is open to all topics, contents and perspectives of legal history research and teaching. The forum historiae iuris sees itself as a (market)place for the presentation and discussion of legal-historical topics and theses, whether in the form of articles and miscellanies, or reports and reviews. At the same time, the FHI should also serve as an information platform for all those interested in legal-historical discourse and events in this context.

These goals determine the work of the Editorial Board and the Editorial Team. We look forward to your interest in our journal forum historiae iuris!