The Jurists: A Critical History
edited by James Gordley
The book is an intellectual history of the work of
Western jurists from ancient Rome to the present. It discusses the Roman
jurists, the medieval civilians and canon lawyers, the late scholastics, the
natural law schools of the 17th and 18th centuries, the positivism and
conceptualism of the 19th century and its influence on common law, and the
reaction against conceptualism since the late 19th century.
Rarely have jurists worked alone. Rather, they have worked in schools, each of
which pursued a different project. The projects of the jurists had one element
in common: they were attempts to understand and explain the law. Commitment to
that project defines the work of a jurist and distinguishes it from the work of
others who take part in fashioning and applying the law. Yet the project of
each school of jurists had goals and methods of its own.
By identifying them, this study shows how the jurists
themselves understood their work and how these goals and methods shaped and
limited what each school could achieve.