From the Judge's ?Arbitrium? to the Legality Principle.

The legality principle characterizes all western legal systems, and it has become an integral part of the Western rule of law and the international human rights law. The principle dates back to enlightened jurists such as Cesare Beccaria and to social contract thinkers such as Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu, according to whom judges were to act only as the mouthpiece of the statutory law. Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach, the inventor of the famous maxim >nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege<, developed these thoughts further. The emergence of the legality principle links closely to the teachings on the division of powers. The studies of this volume cover most of Europe from England, Italy and Spain to Sweden, Russia and England, and both the South and North American continents. In most parts of Europe, the nineteenth-century criminal law reforms form an integral part of the >liberal< agenda. These changes took place, however, at different times in different parts of the Western world, and for slightly different reasons. Comparative legal history shows, furthermore, that the roots of the principle date much further back in history than the eighteenth century. Before the formulation of the legality principle, written statutes already played a significant role in the criminal law in many parts of the Western world. The articles of the volume, written by the foremost experts on comparative legal history, demonstrate that the attitudes and practices toward written statutes as sources of criminal law varied greatly from one region to another. In most parts of the European continent judicial arbitration was carefully defined in legal scholarship (Italy, France), whereas in some regions written law played an important role from early on (Sweden). Although the nineteenth century was fundamental in shaping the legality principle, in some countries its breakthrough remained even then far from complete (Russia, the United States).

Georges Martyn studied law and medieval studies in Kortrijk and Leuven (Belgium). In 1996 he defended his PhD thesis on early modern private law legislation in the Southern Netherlands. From 1992 to 2008 he was »advocaat« (lawyer/barrister). Since 1999 is Professor of Legal History, Legal Methodology and General Introduction to Law at the University of Ghent, where he is Director of the Legal History Institute. He is also a substitute magistrate (justice of the peace). His main fields of research are the history of the legal professions, legal iconography and early modern private and public law. Anthony Musson is Professor of Legal History at the University of Exeter and Co-Director of the Bracton Centre for Legal History Research. He has published extensively in the fields of criminal justice history, medieval political and legal culture including [with W.M. Ormrod] »The Evolution of English Justice« (Basingstoke, 1999) and »Medieval Law in Context« (Manchester, 2001). He has also published »Crime, Law and Society in the Later Middle Ages« [with Edward Powell] (Manchester, 2009) and several volumes of essays including »Making Legal History« (Cambridge, 2012) [edited jointly with Chantal Stebbings]. He has held research awards from the British Academy (exploring legal iconography, especially images of the law in art and the architecture of court buildings) and the Economic and Social Research Council (examining the private lives of medieval and Tudor lawyers). Heikki Pihlajamäki is professor of comparative legal history at the Faculty of Law of the University of Helsinki, and he is one of the leading legal historians and comparative lawyers in Northern Europe. Pihlajamäki has been a visiting professor at several European universities (Ghent, Frankfurt, Madrid). He has published many books, peer-reviewed articles and contributions on legal-historical themes of the early modern period, but also on other subjects and other eras. Professor Pihlajamäki is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt and of the editorial board of four international legal history journals.