Postgraduate Course: Global Legal Histories (LAWS11548)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course takes a 'global' approach to the concept of legal history. Rather than focusing on one legal family or one legal culture only, it examines - through comparison - different legal families and cultures across space and time. Issues such as legal history and legal culture across borders, constitutional experiences in global perspective, and the history of judicial experiences will form the substance of the course. Students will develop an understanding of the relationships between national legal-historical traditions and global legal history. |
| Course description |
The course will consist of 10 seminars. Seminar 1 will be devoted to an introduction and contextualisation of the course. The remaining 9 seminars will be divided (3 apiece) among the following 3 broader topics:
Legal history and legal culture across borders,
- What is legal culture?
- Legal culture(s) and legal families
- Comparing legal cultures across time and space
Constitutional experiences in global perspective,
- Latin America and the civilian tradition
- Civil law and the Meiji restoration in Japan
- The codification of Thai civil law
The history of judicial experiences.
- Law-finding in common-law legal cultures
- Law-finding in civil-law legal cultures
- Finding and applying the law in a 'wicked legal system'
Please note that classes for this course will be jointly taught with Honours level students. Although students at both levels will study the same course materials, assessments will be graded according to the relevant benchmark appropriate to the level of study.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 5 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by two essays (each of 2,500 words), one due in the middle of the course (30%), the other at the end of the course (70%). The first essay will be formative as well as summative. Feedback will be provided to the students after the first essay, which has a much lighter weighting in the overall assessment, but also with an element of feed-forward to assist in preparation of the second essay. |
| Feedback |
The first essay will be formative as well as summative. Feedback will be provided to the students after the first essay, which has a much lighter weighting in the overall assessment, but also with an element of feed-forward to assist in preparation of the second essay. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Engage with and critically assess relevant primary and secondary sources.
- Demonstrate a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the principal areas, features, boundaries, terminology, and evolving conventions within the nascent field of Global Legal History, with a particular emphasis on the critical analysis of diverse legal systems and their interactions
- Critically evaluate the principal theoretical and methodological approaches within Global Legal History, including their limitations and potential for innovation, and apply these approaches to complex legal history debates.
- Conduct comparative analyses of legal history and legal culture across borders, constitutional experiences in global perspective, and the history of judicial experiences, demonstrating an advanced understanding of the interconnectedness and transnational flows of legal ideas and practices.
- Articulate and develop original arguments and research proposals that address emerging challenges and opportunities in Global Legal History, demonstrating a capacity for independent scholarly inquiry and contribution to the development of the field (optional).
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Reading List
Mathias Reimann, 'Rechtsvergleichung Und Rechtsgeschichte Im Dialog', Zeitschrift Für Europäisches Privatrecht 7 (1999): 496 - 512
Thomas Duve, 'Legal Traditions: A Dialogue between Comparative Law and Comparative Legal History', Comparative Legal History 6 (2018): 15 - 33
David M. Rabban, 'Methodology in Legal History', in Making Legal History, ed. Anthony Musson and Chantal Stebbings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 88 - 107
Thorsten Keiser, 'Europeanization as a Challenge to Legal History', German Law Journal 6 (2005): 473 - 481
David Ibbetson, 'What is Legal History a History of?', in Law and History: Current Legal Issues 2003 Volume 6, ed. Michael Lobban and Andrew Lewis, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1- 3
Matthew J. Festa, 'Applying a Usable Past: The Use of History in Law', Seton Hall Law Review 38 (2008): 479 -554
Richard A. Posner, 'Past-Dependency, Pragmatism, and Critique of History in Adjudication and Legal Scholarship', The University of Chicago Law Review 67 (2000): 573 - 606
Kjell Å Modéer, 'Abandoning the Nationalist Framework: Comparative Legal History', The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History, ed. Heikki Pihlajamäki, Markus D. Dubber and Mark Godrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 100-114
Heikki Pihlajamäki, 'Tracing Legal History In Continental Civil Law', The Oxford Handbook of Legal History, ed. Markus D. Dubber and Christopher Tomlins, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 718 - 737
Olivier Moréteau et al., Comparative Legal History, Research Handbooks in Comparative Law (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Pub, 2019) Jaakko Husa, 'Seeking a Disciplinary Identity - the Case of Comparative Legal History', Comparative Legal History 8 (2020): 173 - 193
David Ibbetson, 'The Challenges of Comparative Legal History', Comparative Legal History 1 (2013): 1 - 11.
David Ibbetson, 'Comparative Legal History', in Making Legal History, ed. Anthony Musson and Chantal Stebbings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 131 - 145
Thomas Duve, 'What Is Global Legal History?', Comparative Legal History 8 (2 July 2020): 73 - 115 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Skills and abilities in Research and Enquiry:
- Experience of synthesising complex information and the ability to subject it to informed critique
- Offer critical insights, interpretations and solutions to problems arising from the nature and function of comparison in the context of the 'global'.
- Critically review and consolidate knowledge, skills, practices and thinking in a subject/discipline.
- Interdisciplinary understandings of complex problems
Skills and abilities in Personal and Intellectual Autonomy
- Demonstrate some originality and creativity in dealing with complex issues arising from comparing legal histories across space and time.
- Synthesis of complex information and ability to subject to informed critique.
- Make judgments where data/information is limited or comes from a range of sources.
Skills and abilities in Communication:
Knowledge and understanding as well as the practice of it, transferable cognitive skills (such as research methods and critical analysis of primary and secondary sources), communication and ICT skills, autonomy, accountability and the ability to work with others.
Skills and abilities in Personal Effectiveness:
- Appreciation of the value of history in recreating the past and influencing the present.
- Autonomy in critical analysis of primary and secondary sources.
- Critical self-reflection on the purposes of history for the development and future directions of global law. |
| Keywords | legal history,global histories,civil law,legal culture,constitution |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Ms Lisa Cowan
Tel:
Email: lcowan2@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Hannah Ackroyd
Tel: (0131 6)50 2008
Email: hackroyd@ed.ac.uk |
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