Open Access Book Series »Global Perspectives on Legal History« with Two New Volumes

31. August 2018

With Diritto: storia e comparazione. Nuovi propositi per un binomio antico, edited by Massimo Brutti and Alessandro Somma, the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History presents the newest publication in its book series Global Perspectives on Legal History.

With Diritto: storia e comparazione. Nuovi propositi per un binomio antico, edited by Massimo Brutti and Alessandro Somma, the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History presents the newest publication in its book series Global Perspectives on Legal History.

In 25 contributions, both legal historians and comparative lawyers investigate the interrelationship of their fields of expertise as well as their current development. Thus, some contributions such as Sulla convergenza tra studio storico e comparazione giuridica (M. Brutti) or Comparazione giuridica, fine della storia e spoliticizzazione del dititto (A. Somma) concentrate on theoretical aspects, while others are dedicated to specific research topics, such as Rethinking eurocentrism. European Legacy and Western Colonialism (L. Nuzzo) or Quale storia del diritto? Vecchi e nuovi scenari narrativi tra comparazione e globalizzazione (E. Augusti). The result are diverse ideas on the meaning and future of two scientific disciplines, which are historically closely connected, have in the 20^th century increasingly move away from one another, and are now, given the opening of both disciplines to new methods and theories, not only enquiring about their relation to one another but also about their disciplinary identity. The multilingual volume contains mainly Italian, but also English and Spanish contributions.

The second new volume in the series is edited by Benedetta Albani, Otto Danwerth and Thomas Duve: Normatividades e instituciones eclesiásticas en la Nueva España, siglos XVI–XIX, is the first of four planned books dealing with the contribution of ecclesiastical institutions to normative orders in early modern Ibero-America.

What significance did religious institutions and their actors have for the formation of normative orders in Mexico (New Spain) of the 16^th to the 19^th centuries? The volume takes up this little-researched question in the field of legal history. In fourteen Spanish-language, interdisciplinary papers, the authors examine the relationships between various types of religious normativity (such as canon law and moral theology), their local adaptations and links to global debates. They also deal with diocesan administration and sacramental dispensation, with indigenous and Afro-American actors in court, and with normative aspects of piety in cultural life until the 19^th century. These research findings are relevant not only to legal history, but also to the history of the church and theology, social and cultural history, and ethnohistory.

Both volumes are available as usual on the website of the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History for PDF download and, in addition, in JSTOR and in the Internet Archive – always in Open Access. 

GPLH (PDF)