Roundtable: Law and the Medieval Village Community
Location:
Teaching Room 02
Old College
Date/time
Fri 26 January 2024
15:00-17:00
This event is a book launch to celebrate Dr. Lorren Eldridge’s recent monograph on village communities in medieval law. It is a panel discussion involving the author, Professor Michael Lobban, All Souls Oxford, and Professor Gwen Seabourne, Bristol University.
This book expands on established doctrine in legal history and sets out a challenge for legal philosophers. The English medieval village community offers a historical and philosophical lens on the concept of custom which challenges accepted notions of what law is.
The book traces the study of the medieval village community from early historical works in the nineteenth century through to current research. It demonstrates that some law-making can and has been ‘bottom-up’ in English law, with community-led decisionmaking having a particularly important role in the early common law. The detailed consideration of law in the English village community reveals alternative ways of making and conceiving of law which are not dependent on state authority, particularly in relation to customary and communal property rights. Acknowledging this poses challenges for legal theory: the legal positivism that dominates Western legal philosophy tends to reject custom as a source of law. However, this book argues that medieval customary law ought to be considered ‘law’ if we are ever going to fully understand law – both then and now.
The book can be purchased here
About the author
Lorren Eldridge is an Early Career Fellow in Legal History at the University of Edinburgh. She is a lawyer and legal historian whose research focuses on the relationship between legal history and legal theory. She is particularly interested in English land law, both medieval and more recent, and in the legal philosophical approach and method known as historical jurisprudence.
The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and academics working in the areas of Legal History, Legal Theory, and Jurisprudence.
This event is hybrid.