HIST 312A European Law from Antiquity to Napoleon
Law rules our lives, but there are few opportunities to study law as an undergraduate. This course will consider the major systems of law in European history - Roman law, feudal law, canon law, civil law, English common law - and will also pay attention to the changing understanding of natural law, the process of codification and the imposition of the Napoleonic Code on Europe, and the use of international law in the twentieth century. Law will be studied primarily through the lens of intellectual history, focusing on concepts, definitions, and principles, but the social and political implications of law will also be periodically addressed. Readings will include both excerpts from the great legal texts of the European past and scholarly overviews of legal history.