On Common Laws

• Weaves together legal history, legal theory and comparative law in a groundbreaking analysis of the history and continued importance of common laws throughout Europe and the wider world
• Presents Patrick Glenn's original conception of law which reconciles the idea of international legal cultures with the influence of long-standing traditions and state structures
• Offers a powerful corrective to state-centred theories of law and law-making that have dominated legal theory since the nineteenth century

The concept of common law has been one of the most important conceptual instruments of the western legal tradition, but it has been neglected by legal theory and legal history for the last two centuries. There were many common laws in Europe, including what is known in English as the common law, yet they have never previously been studied as a general phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century, the common laws of Europe lived in constant interaction with the particular laws which prevailed in their territories, and with one another.

Common law was the main instrument of conciliation of laws which were drawn from different sources, though applicable on a given territory. Claims of universality could be, and were, reconciled with claims of particularity. Nineteenth and twentieth century legal theory taught that law was the exclusive product of the state, yet common laws continued to function on a world-wide basis throughout the entire period of legal nationalism. As national legal exclusivity is increasingly challenged by the process of globalization, the concept of common law can be looked to once again as a means of conceptualisation and justification of law beyond the state, while still supporting state and other local forms of normativity.

Readership: Academics, graduate students and practitioners with an interest in the fields of legal history, legal theory, comparative law, and European law