The Rise of Learned Law in Medieval Europe had significant Impact on Economic Growth
Groundbreaking research demonstrates the importance of the medieval universities and their legal departments for the economic development and growth in Europe 1200 – 1600
Jurists, Clerics, and Merchants: The Rise of Learned Law in Medieval Europe and its Impact on Economic Growth
By Hans-Bernd Schäfer, (Bucerius Law School Hamburg, Germany) and Alexander J. Wulf
In: Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Volume 11, Issue 2, pages 266–300, June 2014
ABSTRACT
Between the years 1200 and 1600, economic development in Catholic Europe gained momentum. By the end of this period, per-capita income levels were well above the income levels in all other regions of the world.
In a piece of new groundbreaking research, Hans-Bernd Schäferand Alexander J. Wulf relate this unique development to the resurrection of Roman law, the rise of canon law, and the establishment of law as a scholarly and scientific discipline taught in universities.
Two competing hypotheses on the impact of these processes on economic growth in medieval Europe were tested:
– The first conjecture was that the spread of substantive Roman law was conducive to the rise of commerce and economic growth.
– The second and competing conjecture was that growth occurred not as a result of the reception of substantive Roman law but because of the rational, scientific, and systemic features of Roman and canon law and the training of jurists in the newly established universities (Verwissenschaftlichung), which took place from 1080 AD, when Bologna began teaching the Corpus Juris Civilis (“Body of Civil Law”) and develop a legal culture. One consequence of this was the development of highly trained legal elite.
This gave the law throughout Europe an innovative flexibility, which also influenced merchant law (lex mercatoria), and customary law. However, the question is: Was it the “law” itself, which was conducive to growth? Or was it the development of a widespread legal culture?
Using data on the population of more than 200 European cities as a proxy for per-capita income, the authors found that an important impact for economic development was not primarily the content of Roman law per se, but the rise of law faculties in universities and the emergence of a legal method developed by glossators and commentators in their interpretation and systematization of the sources of Roman law (Corpus Juris Civilis, Digests) and canon law.
The endeavor to extract general normative conclusions from these sources led to abstraction, methodology, and the rise of law as a scholarly discipline.
Wherever law faculties were founded anywhere in Europe, jurists learned new legal concepts and skills that were unknown before and conducive for doing business. Perhaps it is time to lawyer up, Europe!
Literacy and Law
Apart form the precise discussion of what came first – growth or lawyering – the article presents a splendid overview of the development of legal culture as e.g. witnessed by the growth in Roman and Canon law manuscripts after 1150 AD. (p 297). What it does not discuss, though, is why this “legal” explosion took off at that time. Here one tentative prerequisite should perhaps be mentioned; the general growth of literacy fostered by the adoption of a technological innovation, the introduction of paper-mills in the aftermath of the crusades.
It might be thoroughly interesting to know how many of those legal manuscripts, which are listed in the relevant databases, which were in fact written on vellum and which on paper. And whether there is a statistical correlation?
A very inspiring article!
Link to article at ResearchGate
