The Impact of Ideas on Legal Development

This book explores the intellectual contexts in which the development of tort law took place in Europe. With contributions from legal theorists, social and intellectual historians and comparative lawyers, it examines how conceptions of community and responsibility changed over time, providing a context both for new notions of the role of the state in protecting its citizens and for new interpretations of older private law concepts. The book also examines how the law of tort was shaped and applied by judges in the codified and uncodified systems, comparing the common law system of England with the systems in France and Germany, whose codes were created in very different contexts. The book includes chapters that look at the role of experts in shaping the law's response to workplace hazards and concludes with a discussion of the role of academic networks in developing the notion of a European private law.

Michael Lobban is Professor of Legal History at Queen Mary, University of London, where his research interests lie in the fields of English legal history and the history of jurisprudence.

Julia Moses is a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield, where her research focuses on the intersection of social policy, the law and transnational connections in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and Europe.