Pawned Horses: Risk and Liability in Fourteenth Century German Small-Credit Market

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 387-409
Author(s):  
Aviya Doron
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Credit Market ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Risks And Benefits

Abstract Many Jewish-Christian credit transactions relied on pawns as collateral, which presumably eliminated the risk in the case of debtors’ default. However, keeping and maintaining certain pawns involved particular risks that further complicated these transactions. This paper focuses on live pawns, specifically horses, where the safekeeping of the animal involved far greater difficulties and risks than with other valuable objects that were pawned with Jews. By tracing how legal norms and practices addressed some of the unique risks attached to receiving horses as pawns, this article will outline the expectations both Jews and Christians had when engaging in credit transaction secured by horses. Relying on responsa literature, urban legislation, and court cases from the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, this analysis will discuss some of the complications relating to liability over live pawns, with the goal of demonstrating how a specific type of pawn, and its unique risks and benefits, reflects previous assumptions and expectations regarding risk and trust.

The Urban Environment and Medieval Social Strategies

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Irina Variash
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Public ◽  
Crown Of Aragon ◽  
History Of ◽  
Call To Prayer

The article discusses the issue of the so-called segregation norms against Muslims that emerged in the fourteenth century in Christian Law. The author analyzes source material relating to the history of the Crown of Aragon and raises the following question: is it possible to trace any connection between the urban environment and those social strategies that were applied to the infidels in the Middle Ages? Such research optics makes it possible to distinguish several types of segregation laws, some of which were a product of the urban environment and urban culture, which is substantiated by the author on the basis of the royal ordonnances, capitulae of the Valencian Cortes, Fuero of Valencia. The author discusses new legal norms that contradicted the early privileges for Muslims (12th — 13th centuries) and regulated Muslims’ appearance (a distinctive sign on clothes, a special hairstyle), their right to live together or next to Christians, their work on Sundays and Christian holidays, and also prohibited the public call to prayer. Paradoxically, these norms, being aimed at restricting the rights of the infidels (i.e. the Others), were formulated under the influence of the urban environment, in a settlement that was heterogeneous in its genesis and diverse in its nature. The Iberian-Latin civilization, which accumulated the human capital of the Muslim civilization in the course of the Reconquista, began to change its own social strategies in the management of Muslims in the fourteenth century. The experience of the cities was crucial in this process.

COURT CASES AND LEGAL ARGUMENTS IN ENGLAND, c.1066–1166

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 91-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractTHE relationship between law, the power of participants in disputes, and the structure of society and politics is always a complex one. It is also, not surprisingly therefore, controversial in writings on jurisprudence, modern law, and legal history. In this paper I argue for the importance of legal norms in the conduct of disputes in England in the period between the Norman Conquest and the early Angevin legal reforms. This importance is certainly related to the extent of Anglo-Norman royal power. However, in a wider context I shall argue against any necessary, simple, and direct link between political structure and the existence and influence of legal norms.

The Communist Judicial System in China, 1927-1976

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Fang
Keyword(s):  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Judicial Archives

Drawing on hundreds of newly released judicial archives and court cases, this book analyzes the communist judicial system in China from its founding period to the death of Mao Zedong. It argues that the communist judicial system was built when the CCP was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the GMD, meaning that the overriding aim of the judicial system was, from the outset, to safeguard the Party against both internal and external adversaries. This fundamental insecurity and perennial fear of loss of power obsessed the Party throughout the era of Mao and beyond, prompting it to launch numerous political campaigns, which forced communist judicial cadres to choose between upholding basic legal norms and maintaining Party order. In doing all of this, The Communist Judicial System in China, 1927-1976: Building on Fear fills a major lacuna in our understanding of communist-era China.

About Categories of Judicial Cases Arising in the Course of State Control (Supervision's) and Municipal Control

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
A. I. Stakhov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
State Control ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Judicial Practice ◽  
Administrative Proceedings

Оn the basis of a comprehensive analysis of legal norms that induce (display) independent categories of administrative cases assigned to the competence of courts, significant shortcomings in the categorization of cases of administrative offenses assigned to the competence of arbitration courts are revealed. The author substantiates the allocation of a system of typed categories of administrative and tort court cases arising in the course of state control (supervision) and municipal control. The proposed proposals on the separation and categorization of administrative and tort cases arising in the course of state control (supervision) and municipal control are proposed to be used as a scientifically based reference point in optimizing judicial practice, as well as administrative proceedings in cases of administrative offenses.

Power, Morality, and Political Change in Fourteenth-Century Rome

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-68
Author(s):  
James A. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Urban Elite ◽  
Ideological Conflict ◽  
To Come

This chapter explores the second major challenge facing Rome's ruling elite: the transformation of the ruling group itself. It looks at the two visions of Rome that defined the city's early fourteenth-century political culture: the Rome of the barons and that of the nonbaronial urban elite. This long-standing ideological conflict was waning by the mid-fourteenth century, as formal rivals for power in Rome began to come together to form a new composite ruling group. The chapter then reveals this transitional moment through an analysis of the unique testament of a Roman baron, Francesco di Giovanni Romani Bonaventurae. Like all testators, Francesco feared death and prepared for it, but he did so in a highly unusual way, a confessional way that allows one to glimpse how the complexities of mid-fourteenth-century Roman politics could be instantiated in a single life. The chapter also studies court cases and other documents revelatory of his character as well as his relationship to Rome and to his political rivals there.

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