11. November 2011, 14.00 Uhr

Panel II: Transfer of Normative Orders – Normative Orders from Transfer

Introduction:

Annette Warner (Imhausen)

The plurality of normative orders and in particular the plurality of legal orders is by no way a new development. In the past it was the normal condition of human societies. Different actors and institutions had different degrees of a power of legislation and jurisdiction within one and the same society. Between different territories, groups and areas of legislation and jurisdiction complex processes of exchange and transfer took place. It was a quite usual  phenomenon that one took the law from a foreign county to create the legal order in one´s own country. In some areas a longue durée of normative influence can be observed – the more than thousand years of the influence of the Roman law in Europe is only one prominent example of many. It is an example where a lot of research has been done. But we still know very little about legal pluralism and the transfer of normative orders in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Annette Warner (Imhausen) is Professor for the History of Ancient Science at Frankfurt University since 2009 having previously held a junior professorship at Mainz University and research positions at the former Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, (MIT, Cambridge, Mass.) and at Trinity Hall (University of Cambridge, England). She has published Ägyptische Algorithmen [Egyptian Algorithms – an analysis of ancient Egyptian mathematical problem texts](2003) and coedited Under One Sky. Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near East (2002) and Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Rome, and Greece Translating Ancient Scientific Texts (2010).

Lecture 1:

„Transfer of Normative Orders. Building Materials for Young National States – a Southeast Europe Project.“

Michael Stolleis

Since the 17th century there has been historical reflections about how and why the ancient Roman law was  received, formed through teachings and practice of the medieval Italy north of the Alps. Also since the 19th century there was discussion about the city status of Lübeck in the context of the Hanse as well as the spreading of the Magdeburg law onto cities in the Slavic east. The contemporary legal history searches for new models and terminologies in order to grasp the transfer of codes of law, principles of law, institutions, legal terminology or cultural habits of executioners of law. Here it is going to be reported on a project on south-east Europe (1850 to 1933) regarding the transfer of normative orders (constitutional law, civil law, criminal law) in former provinces of the Ottoman empire that have now become young nation states such as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Serbia, and Albania.

Michael Stolleis was born in 1941, studied law in Heidelberg and Würzburg. First and Second State examination in 1965, 1969, Doctorate 1967, Habilitation 1973 in Munich. 1974 – 2006 Professor of Public Law, Modern History of Law and Canon Law at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. 1992 to 2009 Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt am Main. Important publications concerning Social Law and History of Law from the Early Modern Period to the Contemporary History of Law, in particular: Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland, 4 vols, (Munich1988, 1992, 1999, 2012). DFG Leibniz Award in 1991, Balzan Award in 2000, Federal Cross of Merit, 2010. Honorary doctorates from Lund, Toulouse, Padua, Helsinki and member of numerous academies.

Lecture 2:

Jane Burbank

This lecture explores the law in operation in imperial Russia in the early 20th century, with a focus on „orders of justification“ and the rights of the empire‘s subjects. I provide an overview of Russia‘s kind of rule of law, and the legal pluralism it sustained and exploited. I then focus on the issue of personal dignity at different sites in the legal system. I argue that the state, through its legal structures, provided for the defense of individual dignity, and that this state-assumed right to protect its subjects‘ honor was a key element of patrimonial and legal sovereignty.

Jane Burbank, New York University, Professor of History and Russian and Slavic Studies, 2002-, Collegiate Professor, 2008-; Humboldt University, Berlin, Sonderforschungsbereich 640, Distinguished Visiting Professor, 2010-2011; Ph.D., Harvard University, Russian History, 1981; M.A., Harvard University, Soviet Studies, 1971; M.L.S., Simmons College, 1969; Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, with Frederick Cooper (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, pb 2011); Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700-1930, eds. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, Anatolyi Remnev (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905-1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, edited with David L. Ransel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Perestroika and Soviet Culture, edited with William G. Rosenberg, Michigan Quarterly Review, special issue, Fall 1989; Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917-1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986; paperback, 1989).