{"title":"Irreducible ambiguity? The line between custom and statute in the law-making of thirteenth-century Poland","authors":"P. Gorecki","doi":"10.1093/hisres/htad013","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n A resurging subject today is medieval customary law and its boundary with statute. Regarding Poland, the inquiry is complicated by a historiographical consensus that here the law essentially was customary, supplemented by statute only in the later fourteenth century. This certainty has reduced legal reality to unwarranted uniformity. In response, I survey the terminology related to custom and statute, examine one document bridging that terminology and an enactment resembling a statute, and place that enactment in a long earlier legacy of written rule-making. This is not a sharp transition from custom to statute, but an evolving sequence of written expression.","PeriodicalId":13059,"journal":{"name":"Historical Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Historical Research","FirstCategoryId":"1090","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htad013","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A resurging subject today is medieval customary law and its boundary with statute. Regarding Poland, the inquiry is complicated by a historiographical consensus that here the law essentially was customary, supplemented by statute only in the later fourteenth century. This certainty has reduced legal reality to unwarranted uniformity. In response, I survey the terminology related to custom and statute, examine one document bridging that terminology and an enactment resembling a statute, and place that enactment in a long earlier legacy of written rule-making. This is not a sharp transition from custom to statute, but an evolving sequence of written expression.
期刊介绍:
Since 1923, Historical Research has been a leading mainstream British historical journal. Its articles cover a wide geographical and temporal span: from the early middle ages to the twentieth century. It encourages the submission of articles from a broad variety of approaches, including social, political, urban, intellectual and cultural history.