The Evolution of Law: How Medieval Peasant Disputes Shaped Legal Systems

Presenter: Caroline Doss

Faculty Mentor: Michael Peixoto, David Frank

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Undeclared- Anticipated: Anthropology

How have legal proceedings evolved throughout the centuries? In the late nineteenth century, Frederick William Maitland argued that many judicial proceedings were not derived from Roman Law or even royal laws, but from customs of the medieval peasantry and non-judicial decisions and compromises. In more recent decades, a wealth of scholarship has analyzed disputes and settlements in medieval France and England, making connections between practices that used to exist and those that have survived to create our current legal system. For example, Fredric Cheyett’s article “Suum Cuique Tribuere” provides a definition for law that stresses the important of compromise in dispute settlements, an idea present in courts today. However, the legal proceedings of the nobility have also influenced the legal system present in the United States. Through an analysis of medieval disputes and settlements, as well as analyses of the different sorts of trial, primarily annulments and marriage law, my research explores the process in which court practices in divorce and marriage proceedings from both the nobility and peasantry have survived as decisions made out of court came to be a functional legal system. Texts such as Alison Weir’s “Eleanor of Aquitaine” and Baldwin’s “Government of Philip Augustus” will offer key insights into the marriage and annulment processes of medieval France and the evolution of such laws.

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