Legal Practice in Modern History: How Lawyers Invented History

Citation

Dodd L (2021) Legal Practice in Modern History: How Lawyers Invented History. Legal History and Modern Practice, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, 22.05.2021-23.05.2021.

Abstract
This paper discusses the contribution of early modern lawyers to the developement of the modern scientific discipline of history. It argues that classical and mediaeval historians viewed their history as a mechanism for disseminating a moral didactic. The model of history as a form of moral instruction was not seriously challenged until the jurist and professor Alciato adapted Renaissance techniques of literary criticism and palaeography to the study of Roman law and its historical reception (a process known now as legal humanism). His pupils in France subsequently applied Alciato’s techniques to the study of their own municipal law. During this process, lawyers transformed history into a study of the authentic origins of institutions and of the processes by which those institutions developed.

Keywords
History; Legal Humanism; Legal History