The EViR Blog

Since December 2023, at least 45 people have died in Angola after consuming a liquid substance intended to determine the validity of sorcery accusations. Anthropologist João Figueiredo explores the history of sorcery beliefs in Angola and the mbulungo ordeal responsible for the recent deaths. He also argues in favour of legal remedies informed by legal pluralism.

The legal anthropologist and historian Armando Guevara Gil takes a micro-historical approach to modern Peruvian legal history. He examines the phenomenon of runaway nuns in the early 19th century – cases on the intersection between secular and church law. In the interview, he comments on the state of Peruvian legal-historical research and argues in favour of paying attention to the microcosm of the individuals’ perceptions and agency.

In September 2023, the second annual conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg took place in Münster. It aimed at shedding light on different processes of standardization in law, which was also the annual theme of the past academic year at the Kolleg. In this report, Benjamin Seebröker gives an insight into the sections and presentations of the conference.

When trying to translate the English term "law" into other languages, one comes across different conceptual pairs such as ius and lex, droit and loi, Recht and Gesetz, all of which have different levels of meaning. Gregor Albers sheds some light on the confusion of terms and makes a conceptual proposal.

The historian Hillard von Thiessen from Rostock deals with the formation of different systems of norms and their mutual concurrence and competition in early modern Europe. His most recent book, Das Zeitalter der Ambiguität (The Age of Ambiguity), was published in 2021, in which he bundles a variety of current research topics into a comprehensive picture of the early modern period. As a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg, he has now refined this picture even further.

During her research on the right of reprisal, a legal instrument from medieval long-distance trade, Leslie Carr-Riegel came across a reference where she had not expected to find it. The time: 1857. The place: the US Congress. The dispute: guano, an animal-derived fertiliser that led to some kind of gold rush in the mid-19th century. Her curiosity was piqued. Here she reports on an unusual case of applying pre-modern law in the midst of an international crisis over the 'white gold'.

On 6 June, the Swedes celebrate their National Day. It commemorates the election of Gustav Vasa as king, who laid important foundations for the modern Swedish state. Legal historian Mia Korpiola has researched the legal reforms under the Vasa kings at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg. In the interview, she explains what steps they took towards greater legal standardisation, and why this was at least partially successful in the end.

The Golden Bull of 1356 is considered one of the most important constitutional documents of the Holy Roman Empire. Eva Schlotheuber has dealt extensively during her one-year fellowship at the Kolleg with the tensions between emperor and pope in the late Middle Ages that led ultimately to Charles IV issuing the Bull. In the interview, she also explains how studying the way that law and politics functioned in the medieval period can help us understand our present better.

With the annual topic “Exception and Plurality”, the directors chose a real challenge for the initial phase of the Kolleg. The aim was to examine methodologically, but also in terms of the sources, the extent to which the relationship between unity and plurality marks the same or a similar borderline as the relationship between rule and exception. The interview sees historian Ulrike Ludwig and legal historian Peter Oestmann explain the idea behind the annual topic and the initial findings.

The police legislation of the early modern period, which attempted to legally regulate wide areas of people‘s lives, has been extensively studied. But how did this work in the context of the overseas colonies of the European powers, where European law met indigenous law? The Finnish legal historian Heikki Pihlajamäki is tackling this question. Together with a small team, he undertakes a comparison of the colonial police legislation of Spain, Portugal, England and the Netherlands.

In October 2022, the workshop "How to Ensure Predictability in Legal Pluralism" took place. The focus was on late medieval long-distance merchants in Northern and Central Europe who conducted trade under conditions of legal pluralism. Vera Teske summarises the most important discussions and discusses methodological challenges in the study of complex contexts of interaction such as pre-modern long-distance trade.

Shouts echo through the long corridors, the two lifts are in constant use, and there is hustle and bustle everywhere. But Kolleg assistant Nadine Zielinski has everything under control and can ensure that each and every box ends up in the right office. When an entire Kolleg moves, and especially so when it moves from different locations, what are needed are organisational skills and meticulous planning.

The anthropologist Dorothea Schulz has been investigating Islam in Africa for a long time. In this interview, she describes the religious constellations of Mali and Uganda and how this plurality is dealt with legally. She also discusses the resulting conflicts between the advocates of legal unity and the defenders of particular rights.

Legal historian Susanne Lepsius is working on a general volume that is intended to introduce readers with no previous legal knowledge to the broad subject of “Law in the Middle Ages”. A conversation about the unifying effect that medieval jurists had, the practical challenges of editing glosses, and the status of law in medieval societies.

Is the relationship between unity and plurality similar to that between rule and exception? And do exceptions lead to legal pluralism? Or is it rather exceptions that are needed to create and maintain unity? These questions, and thus the overarching theme of the previous two terms, were the focus of the first annual conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism”.

Held in August 2022, the 43rd Conference of Legal Historians (Rechtshistorikertag) took “Legal Forms of Validity” as its overarching theme. Jan Matthias Hoffrogge from the Käte Hamburger Kolleg was there in Zurich, and he now reports on the issues discussed. What becomes apparent is that this community of scholars is particularly preoccupied at the moment with phenomena of legal unity and pluralism.
 

Do legal scholars and historians actually mean the same thing when they speak of legal pluralism? Can the idea of the source be transferred without further ado to other sciences such as anthropology? And what is a norm? Understanding across disciplinary boundaries was one of the recurring themes of the first internal workshop at the beginning of June, which was attended by the Käte Hamburger Kolleg’s fellows, board of directors, and academic staff. The programme also saw discussion of two larger publication projects.

Claudia Lieb is an expert in German studies and carries out research at the interface of literary studies and law, focusing in particular on practices of standardising legal language. In the interview, Lieb gives an insight into her research topics and explains how closely language and law are connected.

Leprosy shaped the societies of the Middle Ages and the early modern period like no other disease. Countless regulations on how to deal with it have found their way into secular and canon law over the centuries. Kay Peter Jankrift argues that those suffering from leprosy were considered "living dead" and demonstrates the legal problems this condition posed.

In this in-depth interview, the two directors of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Ulrike Ludwig and Peter Oestmann, describe what is special about the research approach chosen, the opportunities and difficulties that interdisciplinary research entails, and the goals that they have set themselves for the first funding phase.

Ob Maskenpflicht oder Abstandsgebot - unser Alltag ist während der Coronapandemie auch durch Verbote und Vorschriften geprägt. Damit, so argumentiert Peter Oestmann, sichert der freiheitliche Rechtsstaat die grundsätzliche Vermutung zugunsten der Freiheit. Gefährlich werde es dann, wenn der Staat seinen Bürgern Verhaltensweisen erlaubt, Programmsätze verkündet und Ratschläge erteilt.

Even in the Middle Ages, cultural spheres were by no means self-contained. In fact, there was a lively exchange of knowledge, ideas, and texts. In studying political advice literature for rulers in Europe and the Middle East, the historian Sophia Mösch is embarking on an exciting philological search for clues: it is only a meticulous comparison of texts that can lay bare the linguistic and thematic links between the Latin, Greek, Persian and Arabic sources. Despite all the differences, what becomes apparent is that political thought in East and West was probably more closely interrelated than previously assumed.

Derzeit wird in Deutschland wieder einmal über Sinn und Zweck des Zölibats diskutiert. Clara Harder zeigt auf, dass der praktische Umgang mit dieser kirchenrechtlichen Norm im Mittelalter weniger streng gehandhabt wurde. Nicht nur hatten viele Priester eigene Kinder, sondern diese traten später häufig selbst in den Klerus ein.

Did trade in pre-modern towns contribute to a unification of law? This question was the focus of a workshop organised by the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Legal Unity and Pluralism" on 3 December 2021 in cooperation with the Institut für vergleichende Städtegeschichte.

On 24 November 2021, Kolleg Director Peter Oestmann guided the new Fellows on a city tour of Münster that was as educational as it was entertaining. In addition to information on the obligatory sights such as the town hall, where the Peace of Westphalia was concluded, or the Lamberti Church with its three cages for the Anabaptists, Oestmann also shared a lot of details about the legal history of the city.

Under what conditions did people in antiquity conduct trade with each other? How did they make agreements, how did they create mutual trust and what law did they apply? Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz describes the Mediterranean in Roman times as a pluri-legal space that knew not only Roman law but also many older traditions and, in addition, countless local customs and social norms.

Looting and violent confrontations were an everyday phenomenon at sea and, in certain situations, quite legitimate and in accordance with the norms, says historian Gregor Rohmann. During his fellowship at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg, he is investigating controversial semantics of maritime seizure of goods in late medieval northern Europe.

Eyal Katvan is currently a fellow at the EViR Kolleg, where he is investigating family litigation in communal-informal tribunals in Mandatory Palestine (1920-1948). In this interview, he provides insight into his research project and describes how he experiences the digital fellowship.

World days for justice come in many different shades. On the occasion of the World Day for International Justice (July 17), Sebastian S. Spitra has looked at the new plurality of criminal justice under international law.

On 1 June 2021, the new Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism” (EViR) in Münster started its work. In the years to come, we will examine the issue of legal pluralism in various societies from antiquity to the present from different perspectives.