Itinéraires d’histoire de la procédure civile. 2. Regards étrangers

In 2014, the team of Loïc Cadiet, Serge Dauchy and Jean-Louis Halpérin published Itinéraires d’histoire de la procédure civile: 1. Regards français. This was the first product of a seminar that aimed to rectify a gap in the literature caused by the fact that much less attention had been paid to the history of civil procedure than to that of civil law. The volume is valuable. But in the common-law countries, of course, as the detailed common law had emerged from procedure, and the main focus had long been on the development of the law through decided cases, the issue was not so pressing. Of course, one can caricature the differing legal historiographies. The great difference between many of the continental countries and the British experience was codification, and the early-nineteenth-century exportation of French legal ideas over much of continental Europe.

This exportation of French thinking is one of the evident themes in the new volume, expanding the scope of the research outside the hexagon. Some countries, such as Belgium, closely followed the French model, though matters are now changing. The essays included, with occasional voyages into earlier and later epochs, mainly focus on the nineteenth century, a crucial period in most of these countries. As a contributor, this blogger cannot evaluate the volume; but it covers much of western Europe, with the exception of the Nordic countries, and contains much valuable new thinking and research. It is published by IRJS Editions, as vol. 113 in their series Bibliothèque de l’IRJS- Andre Tunc.