News and Notices

mpilhlt and the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) are pleased to announce a new dissertation prize. It will honour outstanding dissertations on topics in European legal history in global perspective, presented for PhD or JSD degrees awarded in the previous calendar year.  Topics may include European legal interactions with people or places outside Europe, legal processes spanning Europe and other regions of the world, and developments in legal theory closely linked to imperial, transnational or trans-regional trends. The deadline for submissions is 1 June 2024. more

Our next lecture of the Frankfurter Rechtshistorische Abendgespräche will focus on a central but often overlooked aspect of the history and theory of law: The development of legal theory in colonial India and Mandatory Palestine. Assaf Likhovski (Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law) will challenge the Eurocentric focus prevalent in current narratives of the history of modern legal theory and offer a broader perspective on the global development of legal thought. more

Max Planck Law is a network of nine Max Planck Institutes across Germany, dedicated to a wide array of legal research from the anthropology of law to tax law. On May 7 at 4 pm, it will host an Open House event online, designed for early career researchers in law. This 45-minute session will provide an opportunity for participants to engage with one another, share ideas, and pose questions in a professional environment. more

Despite regular reporting on political and economic developments in China, a deeper understanding of the country's culture, history and current intellectual debates falls by the wayside. A research project at mpilhlt is translating contemporary Chinese texts into German and aims to build linguistic and cultural bridges. Previously unheard voices from Chinese academia are thus becoming accessible to a wider audience and a more differentiated picture of China is emerging. more

In his recent blog article ‚Migration and trade: two sides of the same coin?‘, Thomas Duve delves into the historical intertwining of migration and trade, drawing on the insights of the School of Salamanca and its significant figures like Domingo de Soto. He shows how theologians and philosophers of the time advocated for the free movement of goods and people based on the ius gentium. more

Throughout his career, John Haldon has served as an intellectual link between different academic cultures, methods, and disciplines. A true scholar of Byzantine society, his work combines a meticulous treatment of texts and material evidence with a holistic approach to social history. Volume 337 of the Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte dedicated to him focusses on the history of law and legal culture in the transformation of the Roman world. more

The great German scholar Otto Hintze (1861–1940) is still known to many as a historian only of Prussia or the Hohenzollern dynasty. Yet his research went far beyond these fields and are of impressive contemporary relevance. Volume 346 of the Studien zur Europäischen Rechtsgeschichte by Hans Joas and Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.) focuses on its impact in the historical social sciences. more

Parliamentary democracy has long been cited as one of the key legal inheritances of the British Empire in its former colonies, but this can obscure our view of the cross-fertilisation of ideas of law, democracy and sovereignty between different British colonies. In this interview, Martin O’Donoghue explains why comparing a small island nation to a subcontinent will yield important insights. more

Legal history and the Rio carnival might seem worlds apart. Yet, this year the Portela Samba school seamlessly wove Rio's long-silenced slavery legacy together with the story of 19th-century lawyer Luiz Gama, whose work freeing hundreds of enslaved people is now being appreciated thanks to the research of our scholar Bruno Lima. more

The treaties for the suppression of the slave trade were the subject of intense legal battles and debates in the first half of the 19th century. Adriane Sanctis de Brito’s book examines the legal disputes that took place within the context of the Anglo-Brazilian treaty by focusing on the political importance of the rules and proceedings regarding the search and capture of ships in the Atlantic Ocean. more

In our upcoming Max Planck Lecture in Legal History and Legal Theory, Shivprasad Swaminathan (Dean-Designate, Shiv Nadar School of Law) delves into the theoretical foundations of the common law, drawing inspiration from Michael Polanyi's concept of polycentricity. more

The mpilhlt is a member of the Frankfurt Alliance, a new science network that brings together 16 renowned institutions from the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region. The alliance aims to intensify cooperation and create synergies between research institutions.  more

Modern law is based on the principle of equality. In today’s highly differentiated societies with their diversity of identities, however, the legal postulate of equality sometimes reaches its limits. The contributions to this edited volume explore the potential tensions between equality and diversity in law in Europe and Latin America between 1800 and the present day. Using a comparative approach, its authors ask what social differences were and/or are of relevance to the law in these countries and regions. more

The research project "China – Norms, Ideas, Practices", conducted by the Department Historical Regimes of Normativity (Thomas Duve) in collaboration with the Max Weber Foundation and the Werner Reimers Foundation, opens a window to this intellectual scene. The project translates selected texts by contemporary Chinese authors into German and publishes them with introductory comments. more

The department ‘Historical Regimes of Normativity’ (Thomas Duve) has restructured its research profile. The well-established research fields ‘Special Legal Orders’ and ‘Doing Legal History’ will be accompanied by new research fields that concentrate on three specific aspects of the history of law: the production and the glocalization of knowledge of normativity and knowledge of normativity from the sphere of the religious. (...) more