Spatial and Temporal Dimensions for Legal History; Research Experiences and Itineraries
The Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History continues its series of open access publications dedicated to theoretical issues about global legal history. Its most recent is Massimo Meccarelli, María Julia Solla Sastre (eds) Spatial and Temporal Dimensions for Legal History; Research Experiences and Itineraries available at http://www.rg.mpg.de/publikationen/gplh-6.
There the volume is described thus:
“The spatiotemporal conjunction is a fundamental aspect of the juridical reflection on the historicity of law. Despite the fact that it seems to represent an issue directly connected with the question of where legal history is heading today, it still has not been the object of a focused inquiry. Against this background, the book’s proposal consists in rethinking key confluences related to this problem in order to provide coordinates for a collective understanding and dialogue.
The aim of this volume, however, is not to offer abstract methodological considerations, but rather to rely both on concrete studies, out of which a reflection on this conjunction emerges, as well as on the reconstruction of certain research lines featuring a spatiotemporal component.”
As this second paragraph suggests, there are many interesting individual studies that stand on their own as well as illuminating the themes of the book. Your blogger, for example, found particularly interesting those by Alejandro Agüero, “Local Law and Localization of Law. Hispanic Legal Tradition and Colonial Culture (16th –18th Centuries)” and Laura Beck Varela, “The Diffusion of Law Books in Early Modern Europe: A Methodological Approach”.
As the webpage states:
“As a whole, the volume aims to present spatiotemporality as a challenge for legal history. Indeed, reassessing the value of the spatiotemporal coordinates for legal history implies thinking through both the thematic and methodological boundaries of the discipline.”
