Paolo Grossi, A HISTORY OF EUROPEAN LAW. Translated by Laurence Hooper Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell (http://eu.wiley.com), The Making of Modern Europe, 2010. xiv + 203 pp. ISBN 9781405152945. £70.
| Author | Paul J du Plessis |
| Pages | 495-497 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2011.0069 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
The series of which this book forms part,
Paolo Grossi is one of the leading figures in the study of the
The book covers the period from the Middle Ages to c 1950 when the first attempts at the formation of a unified European legal culture are made. This is a fair starting point, given the author's specific interest in medieval law, and also reinforces the point made in the preface that the history of European law is one of discontinuity rather than continuity. The book is divided into three sections. The first, which is subdivided in two, focuses on the medieval roots of European law. This is followed by a section on the foundations of the modern legal system. The third section is entitled “Journeys into contemporary law”. Within these three sections, the author treats two larger themes. The first is the transformation of the understanding of law from a medieval notion focusing on the church and the community to a modern notion where law is codified and where it is based on the central authority of the state. The second broad theme explored in this book is the changing social context of law and the relationship between law and culture.
The first section, medieval roots, is a general survey of the rise and maturing of medieval law after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Rather than focusing on detail, it seeks to provide a general narrative in which certain key features of the medieval legal order are explored. These include factors such...
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