Legal History Blog (@legalhistoryblog.bsky.social)

CLH 14:1 Comparative Legal History 14:1 (2026) has been published. Editorial David Schorr & Agustín Parise Comparative law today – tomes, themes, trends Ralf MichaelsThis essay surveys recent themes and trends in comparative law scholarship, with a particular eye towards the connections between comparative law and legal history. The author observes a significant movement towards encyclopaedisation, marked by a proliferation of handbooks and encyclopaedias that attempt to systematise knowledge, though these works often struggle with comprehensiveness and persistent Eurocentrism. While traditional treatises continue to show fealty to established functionalist models, there is an observable shift away from the historical dominance of private law towards holistic, post-doctrinal, and interdisciplinary approaches. A primary concern raised is the ‘turn to method’, where the discipline has become increasingly self-absorbed with methodological pluralism and theory, sometimes resulting in ‘method without comparison’. Furthermore, the survey highlights the vital emergence of decolonial and postcolonial scholarship originating from the Global South, facilitating South-South comparison and challenging the field's colonial and Eurocentric foundations. Finally, the author examines the uneasy relationship between comparative law and legal history, questioning whether the discipline can move beyond viewing legal systems as separate entities towards a more integrated world law approach.Early conflict-of-laws rules: Vietnam’s Lê Code (1483) in East Asian and global contexts Thào Anh HoàngThis article examines one of the earliest codified conflict-of-laws rules in East Asia and its overlooked reception in Vietnam. While systematic codifications of conflict rules in Europe developed much later, the Tang Code of China (652 CE) had already incorporated a provision regulating disputes involving foreigners within its territory. This rule was subsequently received in the legal systems of several Sino-sphere countries, including Vietnam. Vietnam’s Lê Code, in force from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, preserved this conflict rule even after its removal from later Chinese codes beginning in the thirteenth century. This renders the Lê Code the only known continuation of the Tang conflict-of-laws provision. Long mistranslated as a criminal clause concerning ‘minority ethnic groups’, the relevant provision in the Lê Code is re-evaluated here as a conflict-of-laws rule applicable to both civil and criminal matters. This reinterpretation is situated within the context of East Asian legal culture with a functional equivalence approach. The study shows that Vietnamese law should not be viewed only as a marginal recipient of Chinese legal influence, but rather as a key site where an early conflict-of-laws rule was preserved, adapted, and given historical significance within the development of conflict-of-laws regulations across different jurisdictions. The paper also offers a comparative analysis with other legal traditions of the same period as Tang law, including those of early medieval Europe and the Islamic world.Ius commune, Venetian governance, and Croatian Glagolitic culture: testaments from the countryside of Šibenik in the early modern period (1637–1713) Henrik-Riko HeldIn the article, I discuss the entanglement of ius commune and Croatian Glagolitic culture under the auspices of Venetian rule in the early modern period. I analyse 222 testaments written in the Croatian language and Glagolitic script between 1637 and 1713 by Glagolitic priests in the countryside of Šibenik, on the eastern Adriatic coast, then under Venetian rule. I address in particular the terminology employed, as well as the structure of the testaments. I compare them with models found elsewhere in Europe, as evidenced by relevant notarial formularies. Finally, I examine the issue of the validity of testaments composed by ostensibly unauthorised persons (parish priests).The Polish Blackstone: an examination of nineteenth-century Polish scholars’ interpretations of Blackstone and his Commentaries Lukasz Jan KorporowiczThe principal goal of this article is to address the reception of William Blackstone's legal thought and the awareness of his contributions within the context of nineteenth-century Polish legal scholarship. Despite the considerable differences between English and Polish legal traditions, the limited proficiency in the English language within Poland, and the relatively gradual evolution of Polish legal thought, Blackstone's works were acknowledged by academic circles in Poland in the nineteenth century. Over time, this awareness manifested in direct engagement with certain aspects of Blackstone's perspectives. Nonetheless, the temporal disparity between Blackstone's period of influence and the evolution of legal scholarship in partitioned Poland significantly limited the practical opportunities for the integration and application of Blackstonian jurisprudence.Re-enacting the judicial philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Saunders v Vautier and Claflin v Claflin compared Ann MumfordOliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sat on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1889, when, in the case of Claflin v Claflin, he joined the decision that a trust may not be modified if the intention of the testator would be undermined. Claflin rejected Lord Cottenham’s reasoning in Saunders v Vautier that, under certain circumstances, beneficiaries may compel the termination of the trust and transfer the property to them. Claflin v Claflin and Saunders v Vautier are perhaps the two most famous cases in Anglo-American Equity. Through a detailed examination of manuscripts, this article offers a comparative expansion of the US and English histories, and particularly considers the role played by Holmes. Re-enactment theory offers the possibility of creating, or reliving, the intellectual process that led to Claflin, thus revealing a significant moment in the history of US federalism.--Dan Ernst. Book Reviews after the jump. De l’esprit des lois by Montesquieu, edited by Benjamin Hoffmann, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 2024, 1120 pp, €35 (paperback), ISBN 978-2073101402 James Q. Whitman From masters of slaves to lords of lands: the transformation of ownership in the western world by James Q Whitman, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025, 440 pp, £35 (hardback), ISBN 978-1009497534 Rosa Congost The legal legacy of the reformation: Catholic and Protestant approaches to law edited by John Duddington, London and New York, Routledge, 2025, 302 pp, £116 (hardback), ISBN 978-0367209087 Paolo Astorri Shifting sovereignties: a global history of a concept in practice, by Moritz Mihatsch and Michael Mulligan, Berlin and Boston, Walther de Gruyter, 2025, 383 pp, $65.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-3111446561; Sovereignty: European and global histories, 1400-1800, by Cornel Zwierlein and Daniel Lee, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2025, 415 pp, €128 (hardback), ISBN 978-9004212725 James J. Sheehan Family and justice in the archives: historical perspectives on intimacy and the law edited by Peter Gossage and Lisa Moore, Montreal, Concordia University Press, 2024, 442 pp., $59.95, ISBN: 978-1988111438 Chiara Valsecchi Crime and civilization: the birth of criminology in the early nineteenth century by Janne Kivivouri, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024, 256 pp, £100 (hardback), ISBN 978-0198909798 Roberto Catello Law and art in the 19th century. Power in images edited by Giovanni Rossi and Pietro Schirò, Pisa, Pacini, 2024, 520 pp, €60 (paperback), ISBN 978-8833796857 Elisabetta Fusar Poli Legal responses to mass migration: from the nineteenth century to World War II edited by Luigi Nuzzo, Michele Pifferi, Giuseppe Speciale and Cristina Vano, Abingdon, Routledge, 2025, 403 pp, £132 (hardback), ISBN 978-1032910130 Panikos Panayi Strafgesetzbücher der Zwischenkriegszeit edited by Arnd Koch and Martin Löhnig, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2024, 181 pp, €74 (paperback), ISBN 978-3161624322 Milan Kuhli Punishment, labour and the legitimation of power edited by Adam S Fagbore, Nabhojeet Sen and Katherine Roscoe, Abingdon, Routledge, 2025, 238 pp, €145 (hardback), ISBN 978-9463724777 Marjorie Carvalho de Souza Legal education in the western world: a cultural and comparative history by Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2024, 152 pp, $95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1503639041 Giulio Abbate Memory and authority: the uses of history in constitutional interpretation by Jack M. Balkin, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 2024, 370 pp, €35 (paperback), ISBN 978-0300272222 Gary Jeffrey Jacobsohn Comparative history of foreign law. Volume I: legal traditions of antiquity and the middle ages], by Dmitrii Iur'evich Poldinkov, Moscow, Izdatel'stvo Norma Infra-M, 2024, 544 pp, RUB2400 (hardback), ISBN 978-5001563082; Volume II: contemporary legal traditions], by Dmitrii Iur'evich Poldinkov, Moscow, Izdatel'stvo Norma Infra-M, 2024, 624 pp, RUB2760 (hardback), ISBN 978-5001563174 William E. Butler Redefining codification: a comparative history of civil, commercial, and procedural codes by Dirk Heirbaut, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2025, XVI + 462 pp, £160 (hardback), ISBN 978-0198947363 Michele Graziadei http://dlvr.it/TTCBJ7