How was law standardised?

Second annual conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg in September 2023

The second annual conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism” at the University of Münster will take place from 25 to 27 September at the LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster. This year, the focus will be on modes of legal standardisation – from antiquity to the present. The international conference will bring together researchers from the fields of history, law and anthropology.

We take it for granted today that law must be uniform, with overlapping or even contradictory legal norms therefore requiring harmonisation. A look at history shows that earlier societies also attempted to achieve the ideal state of a uniform legal system. One prominent example are the great codification movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, which gave rise to comprehensive legal codes such as the French Code Civil and the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (Civil Law Book). “But, besides the state enactment of norms, legal unity can also be generated by scholarly discourse or by a uniform jurisprudence”, explains Prof. Dr. Peter Oestmann, legal historian at the University of Münster and director of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg. These three different modes are also reflected in the conference sections. His colleague, historian Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ludwig, adds: “From a historical perspective, it is always also about who actually has the power to enforce laws. We are also interested in the connection between social inequality and legal unity. For example, what effects does the modern ideal of the equality of all citizens have on forms of legal unification?”

The lectures range in content from the Corpus Iuris Civilis, Emperor Justinian’s collection of laws from late antiquity, to Spanish colonial law in the early modern period, and to the modern project of human rights, which claims universal validity. “As well as the lectures, we are again planning sufficient time for joint discussion, since this proved to be extremely productive last year”, say conference organisers Oestmann and Ludwig.

The conference programme and registration can be found here.