Making of Legal Authority Non-legislative Codifications in Historical and Comparative Perspective

• Offers the first extended study of the process by which non-legislative codifications are recognised as binding by legal authorities
• Uses the methodology of comparative law and legal history
• Draws on historical and modern examples of non-legislative codifications, including Justinian's Institutes, Blackstone's Commentaries, the Draft Common Frame of Reference and the American Law Institute's Restatements
• Reproductions of the primary texts allows for comparison of the visual aspects of legal texts

Accounts of the nature of legal authority typically focus on the authority of officially sanctioned rules issued by legally recognised bodies - legislatures, courts and regulators - that fit comfortably within traditional state-centred concepts of law. Such accounts neglect the more complex processes involved in acquiring legal authority.

Throughout the history of modern legal systems texts have come to acquire authority for legal officials without being issued by a legislature or a court. From Justinian's Institutes and Blackstone's Commentaries to modern examples such as the American Law Institute's Restatements and the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts academic codifications have come to be seen as legally authoritative, and their norms applied as such in courts and other contexts.

How have such texts acquired legal authority? Does their authority undermine the orthodox accounts of the nature of legal systems? Drawing on examples from Roman law to the present day, this book offers the first comparative analysis of non-legislative codifications. It offers a provocative contribution to the debates surrounding the harmonisation of European private law, and the growth of international law.

Readership: Scholars and students of legal history, comparative law and legal theory.