Legal Theory and Legal History

What can legal theorists learn from legal historians? What guidance can historians take from theorists? What theoretical questions underlie legal historical investigations? These are the questions explored and answered by the articles selected in this volume. Taken together, these papers show that the future of historical jurisprudence is a bright one. This is a jurisprudence that can yield insights about how to conceptualise legal change, how to give voice to those operating outside of legal officialdom, and how to understand the relationship between law and politics. The papers selected range from the challenge to legal positivism from the perspective of the history of the common law, to the latest methodological debates in socio-historical jurisprudence. The volume contains a substantive introduction and a detailed bibliography.

Maksymilian Del Mar is Reader in Legal Theory at Queen Mary University of London, UK and Michael Lobban is Professor of Legal History at the London School of Economics, UK.