Law in Theory and History: New Essays on a Neglected Dialogue [Hardcover]

This collection of original essays brings together leading legal historians and theorists to explore the oft-neglected but important relationship between these two disciplines. Legal historians have often been sceptical of theory. The methodology which informs their own work is often said to be an empirical one, of gathering information from the archives and presenting it in a narrative form. The narrative produced by history is often said to be provisional, insofar as further research in the archives might falsify present understandings and demand revisions. On the other side, legal theorists are often dismissive of historical works. History itself seems to many theorists not to offer any jurisprudential insights of use for their projects: at best, history is a repository of data and examples, which may be drawn on by the theorist for her own purposes. The aim of this collection is to invite participants from both sides to ask what lessons legal history can bring to legal theory, and what legal theory can bring to history. What is the theorist to do with the empirical data generated by archival research? What theories should drive the historical enterprise, and what wider lessons can be learned from it? This collection brings together a number of major theorists and legal historians to debate these ideas.

Maksymilian Del Mar is Professor of Legal Theory at Queen Mary University of London
Michael Lobban is Professor of Legal History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

This collection of essays provides benefits to legal theorists and legal historians, and choristers and non-choristers, alike. The collection achieves the editors' aim of extolling the virtues of considering the lessons that can be shared between legal theory and legal history. Paul Burgess Doctoral candidate, University of Edinburgh,Edinburgh Law Review

... an excellent and thought-provoking book ... a range of considerations and practical difficultieslC,