理解法律与治理:近代早期欧洲法律工作者、法院和诉讼当事人

Understanding Law and Governance:Lawyers,Law Courts,and Litigants in Early Modern Europe

本文重新考察法律职业者在促成所谓的中世纪晚期和近代早期欧洲“法律革命”中的作用。基于最近关于近代早期欧洲诉讼和法律使用的普遍性和广泛性的研究成果,笔者同意其他学者的观点,他们认为,旧有研究夸大了法律工作者在促进正式法律制度和程序的使用方面的贡献。相反,我们应该把法律制度的扩张和正式法律的发展理解为一个由普通人的利益和活动驱动的过程,他们利用法律来组织和管理他们的家庭、社会和经济生活。吊诡的是,近代早期法律的多元性,相互冲突且重叠的法院和法律权威网络,以及多数法院只具备有限强制力,却使法律对诉讼当事人更具吸引力,他们将法8律资源纳入更广泛的纠纷解决和冲突处理策略中。无论如何,本文认为,律师确实在推动“法律意识”和合法性文化发展方面发挥了关键作用。然而,他们很少以法庭顾问和法律代表的身份这样做,而是更多地通过新形式的法律出版物,邀请更广泛的公众来讨论和评判由官方法院和在其中任职的法律从业者所执行的司法质量来做到这一点。

This article re-examines the role of legal professionals in bringing about the so-called"Legal Revolution"of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.Building on recent scholarship analyzing the ubiquity and banality of litigation and uses of the law by premodern Europeans,the author concurs with other scholars who conclude that legal practitioners(barristers,solicitors,notaries,and others)did less to promote the use of formal legal institutions and procedures than previously believed.Instead,we should understand the expansion of legal institutions and the growth of formal law as a process driven by the interests and activities of ordinary men and women who appropriated the law to organize and manage their familial,social,and economic lives.Paradoxically,the pluralistic character of early modern law,with its conflicting and overlapping networks of tribunals and legal authorities,along with the limited coercive power wielded by most tribunals,made law more attractive to parties,who incorporated its resources into a wider array of dispute resolution and conflict management strategies.Nevertheless,this article contends,lawyers did play a crucial role in promoting"legal consciousness"and a culture of legality.They did so,however,less as courtroom advisers and legal representatives,and more through new forms of legal publications that invited a wider public to debate and judge the quality of justice administered by official law courts and the trained legal professionals who staffed them.