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Freda, Dolores --- "Legal education in England and Continental Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern period: a comparison" [2019] ELECD 15; in Moréteau, Olivier; Masferrer, Aniceto; Modéer, A. Kjell (eds), "Comparative Legal History" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 242

Book Title: Comparative Legal History

Editor(s): Moréteau, Olivier; Masferrer, Aniceto; Modéer, A. Kjell

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781781955215

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Legal education in England and Continental Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern period: a comparison

Author(s): Freda, Dolores

Number of pages: 19

Abstract/Description:

The European legal tradition generated the cliché of a marked contrast between common law, assumed to be an oral and exclusively case law, and civil law, seen as a written and doctrinal law rationalized and formalized through codification. According to this view, common law would have developed, since the 12th century, in continuity with the past and the ancient customs of the country, through the stratification of judicial precedents; while civil law would have developed through the doctrinal interpretation and elaboration of the Roman-canon law texts by the doctores of the Continental universities. One consequence of the presumed dichotomy between the two ‘systems’ of common and civil law has been the juxtaposition between the English and Continental systems of legal education: while in England during the early modern period law students were educated in the Inns of Courts through an oral and practical training, on the Continent legal education, held by the universities, spread all over Europe, and had a much more theoretical and doctrinal character. The chapter challenges this assumption of such a marked contrast. Focusing on the characters of the lecturae and disputationes held at the Italian universities and the readings and moots practiced at the English Inns of Court, it stresses the existence of many similarities, showing how the traditional paradigm of the contraposition between common law and civil law cannot be applied tout court to legal education in Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern period.