EHU Module "Legal Cultures & Non-Western Law in a Comparative Framework" (3 ECTS)
The historical sociology of law is a field of research at the intersection of sociology of law and historicalsociology which studies, inter alia, how institutions of public and private law have developed over time, andthe impact this has on the present.
Institutions of private and public law are usually developed considering particular social, economic, andpolitical conditions. However, later they circulate in time and space, arriving as transplants, revivals, orsurvivals in an entirely new systemic environment, sometimes changing or adapting their social function.Such processes may be imposed through violence (e.g., during colonization) or result from an internal desirefor modernization (e.g., in Central Europe after 1989). This is not an entirely new phenomenon, as it canalready be observed in the earlier stages of legal history, as exemplified by the reception of Roman law andthe legal transplantation of European public and private law to Latin America, Africa and Asia during theperiod of colonization. However, in today's globalized world, full of multicentric and overlapping legalsystems, the circulation of legal models is becoming more intense than ever before and is acquiringexceptional significance. The emergence of supranational and transnational law has been crucial in thisrespect.
Not infrequently the origins of certain legal institutions and the route by which they arrived into the system inwhich they operate are neither obvious nor even recognized, yet understanding these may be crucial for theutilization, critique, and reforms of particular regulations. It is exactly historical sociology of law that canprovide the toolbox necessary to establish this missing knowledge.
The course is aimed at developing the ability of critical genealogical reconstruction of the origins of theinstitutions of private and public law in a world of global legal pluralism. Its idea is based on the use of toolsthat allow to determine the circulation of legal models in time and space, in the context of theinterrelationship between law and other domains (politics, economy, ideology, culture).
The course is split into two modules:
I. Theory of historical sociology of law in globalized world
II. Historical sociology of law across centuries and continents (case studies).
The first module introduces a toolbox useful for the historico-sociological understanding of phenomena in theworld of global legal pluralism. It covers the basic concepts of historical sociology of law, its contexts (legalculture of private and public law, relations between law and ideology, politics, economics, and technology),and patterns of circulation of legal models in a globalized world. During the discussion, we will seek toreference the concepts discussed to contemporary, widely debated events and legal phenomena in areas ofinterest to students in order to demonstrate their practical application.
The second module involves zooming in on specific moments in history (and the present) and regions of theworld where the circulation of legal models associated with various stages of globalization has occurred (orcontinues to occur) with particular intensity. We will discuss alterations in legal systems in connection with:the reception of Roman law, colonization, decolonization, the transition from state socialism, and theemergence and expansion of supranational and transnational law. This will allow us to apply the categoriesand concepts introduced in the first module to analyze phenomena familiar to students from different regionsand cultures.
The modules are separated by an inter-module workshop session, during which students will be asked to giveshort presentations on case studies of circulation of legal models in time and space of their choice, whichmay serve as an introduction to working on their final essays.
