History 97g: - What is Legal History

Professor: Tamar Herzog - Legal history has become a popular pursuit in recent decades, but what does it mean to do legal history? Do lawyers, who routinely review precedent or study the evolution of specific pieces of legislation, do legal history? Do judges, when they reconstruct past events in order to apply the law? Do historians, who use legal documentation? And how is legal history differently done in Europe and in the USA? This section will consider these questions (and others) by analyzing the various ways by which different scholars have approached the relationship between law and history over time, in different locations, and for different ends.