Vernacular Law (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781009217897)

Custom was fundamental to medieval legal practice. Whether in a property dispute or a trial for murder, the aggrieved and accused would go to lay court where cases were resolved according to custom. What custom meant, however, went through a radical shift in the medieval period. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, custom went from being a largely oral and performed practice to one that was also conceptualized in writing. Based on French lawbooks known as coutumiers, Ada Maria Kuskowski traces the repercussions this transformation - in the form of custom from unwritten to written and in the language of law from elite Latin to common vernacular - had on the cultural world of law. Vernacular Law offers a new understanding of the formation of a new field of knowledge: authors combined ideas, experience and critical thought to write lawbooks that made disparate customs into the field known as customary law.

Author: Ada Maria Kuskowski
ISBN-10: 1009217895
ISBN-13: 9781009217897
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/03/2022
Pages: 429
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.77lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.13d