(image source: Routledge)
Editorial (Agustín Parise & Matthew Dison) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2500166
Reasoning and reconciliation in twelfth-century Anglo-Norman legal writing (Sarah B. White)
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2500175
Abstract:
This article explores legal reasoning and reconciliation of sources in late twelfth-century legal writing, focusing on four Romano-canonical procedural treatises (‘Olim edebatur editio’, the ordo of Ricardus Anglicus, Actor et reus and the Ordo Bambergensis) and the English common law treatise known as Glanvill. Through a comparative lens, the study highlights how these works addressed conflicts between legal authorities while reflecting broader intellectual trends of the twelfth century. The ordines employ rhetorical techniques, such as contrasting old and new law and learned opinion, to guide legal practitioners through complex legal landscapes. Each text showcases distinct approaches to balancing practical legal knowledge with theoretical discourse. Meanwhile, Glanvill engages more extensively with dilemmatic methods, using questions as a foundational tool for systematic inquiry. Ultimately, these works reveal the authors’ efforts to reconcile diverse legal traditions, highlighting the role of rhetorical strategies in shaping legal reasoning and the broader evolution of legal thought during this period.
Historical development of judicial precedents in Vietnam (Nguyen Thi Phuong)
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2500176
Abstract:
Judicial precedents have played an important role in both common law and civil law countries. Vietnam created a new judicial precedent system in 2015. However, precedents were used in Vietnamese legal proceedings long ago, yet the use of precedents in Vietnamese legal history has been understudied. The article seeks to provide a comprehensive survey of the use of precedents under the Nguyễn Dynasty (1802–1884), the French colonial legal system (1884–1945) and the Republic of Vietnam (in the south, 1955–1963) and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (in the north and central, 1945–1975) during the Vietnam War. The use of precedents under the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1975-now) should have separate research due to the creation of a new precedent system in 2015. From the perspective of global legal history, this article demonstrates that the historical development of judicial precedents in Vietnam involved transnational interactions between Vietnam and other countries, particularly China, France and the US. The article also reveals particular regulatory patterns in the history of Vietnamese precedents: the top-down method in the creation of precedents, the rationales for using precedents, the binding effect and the principle of selecting the best precedents. These findings can help to better understand Vietnamese legal history and suggest that the contemporary system of precedents is not created in a vacuum. Historical lessons can be used to fortify the capability of the recent precedent system.
Anglophone Africa, colonial legacy and the limits of legal transplantation: should the one-legged walk on two feet? Williams C. Iheme
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2500177
Abstract:
The legal systems in Anglophone Africa were colonially inherited from Britain. Even after achieving political independence in the 1990s, neocolonialism continues to be Africa’s Achilles heel in acquiring jurisprudential independence. African lawmakers and judges continue to transplant English statutes and case law wholesale without tailoring them to suit African life. A major consequence of this trend is that African law is pluralistic and vacillates between two opposing legal philosophies: the transplanted laws are largely impervious to African legal and economic problems. The article addresses this apparent slippage by tracing and attacking the lingering vestiges of colonial influence in African legal consciousness and lawmaking. It uses transplanted (contractual) legal concepts as a laboratory for observing and testing the suitability of English legal transplants in African commercial life. It finds, among other things, that African jurisprudential independence is lacking: African intelligentsia, judges and lawmakers need to renounce their fidelity to transplanted English legal concepts and statutes by subjecting them to the scrutiny of Africanisation and by using Afrocentricity against orthodoxy as a guide for contemporary and future lawmaking.
Early parliamentary dissolutions and judicial review: lessons from comparative cases (Francesco Bromo) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2500178
Abstract:
In this article, I explore some implications of judicial challenges to early dissolutions of national parliaments from a comparative perspective. I assess two cases where the constitutionality of the dissolution was upheld (Germany 1983 and 2005) and four where it was not (Czechia 2009, Nepal February 2021 and July 2021 and Pakistan 2022). The evidence suggests that judicial intervention in parliamentary dissolution disputes is often inferred rather than explicitly codified in legal statutes, underscoring the profound impact unwritten constitutional norms and democratic tradition can have on the political process. Predictably, judicial scrutiny of governmental actions enables courts to oversee and, when necessary, rectify breaches of constitutional limits and instances of executive overreach. The Nepalese and Pakistani cases further suggest that the judiciary can play an active role in safeguarding the cardinal principle of parliamentarism, dictating that the legislature must be able to subject governments to the test of confidence when required or if it so desires. A review of the history of judicial intervention in earlier cases of assembly dismissals in Pakistan, however, highlights how this process is not always consistent and unbiased. Gaining a deeper understanding of these interactions is important, given their highly consequential nature, as well as timely, given the increasing reliance on the judicial branch for the adjudication of disputes related to parliamentary dissolution in recent years.
Book reviews
- The Cambridge history of Latin American law in global perspective; A companion to Latin American legal history edited by Thomas Duve and Tamar Herzog, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, 550 pp., (open access), ISBN 978-1009049450,edited by Matthew C. Mirow and Victor Uribe-Uran, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2024, 611 pp., €160 (hbk), ISBN 978-9004370203 (Manuel Bastias Saavedra)
- Justifying transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the law – 1200 to 1700 by Gijs Kruijtzer, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2024, 344 pp, €59.95 (hbk), ISBN 978-3111215907 (Rebecca Riedel)
- Studies in the history of tax law, volume 11 edited by Dominic De Cogan and Peter Harris, Oxford and New York, Hart Publishing, 2023, 529 pp., $175 (hbk), ISBN 978-1509963263 (Zeynep Ağdemir)
- Feder und Recht. Schriftlichkeit und Gerichtswesen in der Vormoderne edited by Josef Bongartz, Alexander Denzler, Carolin Katzer, and Stefan Andreas Stodolkowitz, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2023, 426 pp., €79.95 (hbk), ISBN 978-3111077307 (Sarah A Bachmann)
- Current trends in the historiography of inquisitions: themes and comparisons edited by Irene Bueno, Vincenzo Lavenia and Riccardo Parmeggiani, Rome, Viella, 2023, 411 pp., €42.00 (pbk), ISBN 979-1254694879 (Francesco Serpico)
- The making of modern property: reinventing Roman law in Europe and its peripheries 1789–1950 by Anna di Robilant, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 369 pp., £105.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-1108494779 (Joshua Getzler)
- An empire of laws: legal pluralism in British colonial policy by Christian R. Burset, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2023, 272 pp., $75 (hbk), ISBN 978-0300253238 (Ron Harris)
- English law, the legal profession, and colonialism: histories, parallels, and influences edited by Cerian Griffiths and Łukasz Jan Korporowicz, London and New York, Routledge, 2024, 278 pp., CAD 45.49 (pbk), ISBN 978-1032326191 (Lyndsay Campbell)
- The genesis of nineteenth-century civil codes in the United States by Julie Rocheton, Legal History Library, 66, Leiden and Boston, Brill Nijhoff, 2024, xvi + 272 pp., $142 (hbk), ISBN 978-9004689978 (Olivier Moréteau)
- Artistic canons and legal protection: developing policies to preserve, administer and trade artworks in 19th-century Rome and Athens by Chiara Mannoni, Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, Veröffentlichung des Max-Planck-Instituts für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann, 2023, 278 pp, € 79.00 (pbk), ISBN 978-3465045472 (Mateusz Bieczyński)
- Nazi antisemitism and Jewish legal self-defense: the turn to law in liberal democracies, 1932–39 by David Fraser, Abingdon, Routledge, 2024, 316 pp., £31.99 (hbk), ISBN 978-1032529813 (Rotem Giladi)
- Roe: the history of a national obsession by Mary Ziegler, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2023, 248 pp., $20.00 (pbk), ISBN 978-0300276862 (Joanna N. Erdman)
- The reasonable person: a legal biography by Valentin Jeutner, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, 195 pp., £95.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-1009445627 (Simon Stern)
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