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The Development of the Criminal Law of Evidence in the Netherlands, France and Germany between 1750 and 1870

From the system of legal proofs to the free evaluation of the evidence


Ronnie Bloemberg

This book describes the development of the criminal law of evidence in the Netherlands, France and Germany between 1750 and 1870. In this period the development occurred that the so-called system of legal proofs was replaced with the (largely) free evaluation of the evidence. The system of legal proofs, which had functioned since the late middle ages, consisted of a set of strict evidentiary rules which predetermined when a judge could convict someone. In this book an explanation is given of the question why between 1750 and 1870 the strict evidentiary rules were replaced with the free evaluation of the evidence. The thesis of this research is that the reform was induced by a change in the underlying epistemological and political-constitutional discourses which together provided the ideas which inspired a significant reform of the criminal law of evidence.


Edited by Alfred H.A. Soons



Manuel Lomas


Law’s Dominion

Jewish Community, Religion, and Family in Early Modern Metz


Jay R. Berkovitz

In Law’s Dominion, Jay Berkovitz offers a novel approach to the history of early modern Jewry. Set in the city of Metz, on the Moselle river, this study of a vibrant prerevolutionary community draws on a wide spectrum of legal sources that tell a story about community, religion, and family that has not been told before.

Focusing on the community’s leadership, public institutions, and judiciary, this study challenges the assumption that Jewish life was in a steady state of decline before the French Revolution. To the contrary, the evidence reveals a robust community that integrated religious values and civic consciousness, interacted with French society, and showed remarkable signs of collaboration between Jewish law and the French judicial system.


Wouter Druwé



Edited by Michał Gałędek and Anna Klimaszewska

The driving force of the dynamic development of world legal history in the past few centuries, with the dominance of the West, was clearly the demands of modernization – transforming existing reality into what is seen as modern. The need for modernization, determining the development of modern law, however, clashed with the need to preserve cultural identity rooted in national traditions. With selected examples of different legal institutions, countries and periods, the authors of the essays in the two volumes Modernization, National Identity and Legal Instrumentalism: Studies in Comparative Legal History, vol. I: Private Law and Modernization, National Identity and Legal Instrumentalism: Studies in Comparative Legal History, vol. II: Public Law seek to explain the nature of this problem.

Contributors are Judit Beke-Martos, Jiří Brňovják, Marjorie Carvalho de Souza, Michał Gałędek, Imre Képessy, Ivan Kosnica, Simon Lavis, Maja Maciejewska-Szałas, Tadeusz Maciejewski, Thomas Mohr, Balázs Pálvölgyi, and Marek Starý.

Samuel Pufendorf Disciple of Hobbes

For a Re-Interpretation of Modern Natural Law


Fiammetta Palladini

Fiammetta Palladini’s work is one of the most important discussions of Pufendorf to appear in the latter part of the twentieth century. It cut through the existing field of Pufendorf studies, laying bare its inherited templates and tacit assumptions. Palladini was thus able to peel back the ‘Grotian’ commentary in which the great thinker had been shrouded, revealing a Pufendorf well-known in the 1680s—a formidable and dangerous natural jurist and political theorist—but doubly obscured in the 1980s and still today, by a philosophical history that flies too high to see him, and by a commentary literature that too often does not like what it sees. David Saunders’ remarkable translation carries Palladini’s argument into English with maximum fidelity.

Emmanuel Roucounas



Jean D'Aspremont

This book questions the critical attitude that is informing the critical histories that have been flourishing since the ‘historical turn’ in international law. It makes the argument that the ‘historical turn’ falls short of being radically critical as the abounding critical histories which have come to populate the international literature over the last decades continue to be orchestrated along the very lines set by the linear historical narratives which they seek to question and disrupt, thereby repressing the imagination of international lawyers. It makes the point that the critical histories that have accompanied the ‘historical turn’ have contributed to the repression of disciplinary imagination just like other linear disciplinary histories. This book argues that the critical histories must move beyond a mere historiographical attitude and promotes radical historical critique in order to unbridle disciplinary imagination.


Edited by Simone Zurbuchen

The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625-1800 offers innovative studies on the development of the law of nations after the Peace of Westphalia. This period was decisive for the origin and constitution of the discipline which eventually emancipated itself from natural law and became modern international law.

A specialist on the law of nations in the Swiss context and on its major figure, Emer de Vattel, Simone Zurbuchen prompted scholars to explore the law of nations in various European contexts. The volume studies little known literature related to the law of nations as an academic discipline, offers novel interpretations of classics in the field, and deconstructs ‘myths’ associated with the law of nations in the Enlightenment.