Business Strategies and the Law: Three Types of Entrepreneurial Processes from a Legal History Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-189
Author(s):  
Louis Pahlow ◽  
Sebastian Teupe
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Rule Breaking ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The relationship between business strategies and legal institutions is important for understanding the historical dynamics of modern capitalism. While legal history and economic history have remained distinct disciplines, a growing number of studies now populates a vibrant «borderland» between the two. Building on frameworks of legal history, organization studies, and «new entrepreneurial history», our contribution systematizes the relation of entrepreneurship and the law from a historical perspective of change. This paper explains how an analysis of this specific relation contributes to our understanding of economic change and addresses the question of synthesis and interdisciplinary connectivity by offering a conceptual triad that focuses on the problems of agency and change at the intersection of businesses and the law. This paper argues that economic actors have used, sought, and avoided laws to transform their legal and economic environments. Each of these interactions combined a distinct set of variables conceptualized as legal business creativity, legal-institutional entrepreneurship, and Schumpeterian rule-breaking.

James Willard Hurst as Entrepreneur for the Field of Law and Social Science

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant G. Garth
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Professional Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Celebrations of the career of Willard Hurst tend to concentrate, quite understandably, on his scholarship in legal history. Most of those who now read and comment on his works are professional legal historians, and they tend to read and define Hurst according to that professional identification. This article takes a different approach, concentrating on Hurst's own role in the more general politics of legal scholarship. Hurst was not content with making a mark in legal history. He sought to challenge the legal establishment. We see the legacy of his efforts in the development of the field of law and social science, institutionalized in the mid 1960s in the Law and Society Association (LSA). Therefore, my focus is on the sociology and politics of scholarship rather than on intellectual history. I will not examine the relationship of Hurst's particular works to those who came before or after him, nor will I go through the exercise of suggesting what was good or lasting or useful about his work for present purposes.

The Varieties of Legal History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lobban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Contextual Study

This article looks at the different approaches which have been taken in the study of legal history in England and America by both historians in law and history faculties. The pioneer English legal historian was F.W. Maitland, who felt that the skills of the lawyer were needed to understand the legal materials which were the source of much medieval social and economic history. Maitland, who had no wish to use history to explain current doctrine, inspired a generation of medieval historians to look at legal questions. The study of legal history in English law schools was in turn revolutionized by S. F. C Milsom, who felt that the key to legal history was not to apply the skills of the present lawyer to the law of the past, but to attempt to get into the minds of previous generations of lawyers. Following Milson, doctrinal legal history flourished in England. In the United States, a different tradition dominated law schools. Here, the pioneer was J. Willard Hurst, who turned attention away from narrow doctrinal history, to a broader contextual study of law, looking at the operation of law in society. The article discusses the kind of historiography which developed in America after Hurst, before turning to what discuss what role doctrinal legal history can continue to play, both to inform historical and legal debates.

Manor Court Procedures, Debt Litigation Levels, and Rural Credit Provision in England, c.1290—c.1380

2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Rural Credit ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Methodological Debate

In the last two decades or so, questions of law have moved back to the top of the research agenda in work on medieval English manor courts. This marks a shift away from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, when the historians on both sides of the Atlantic who established the court roll as the pre-eminent source for everyday life in the countryside sought inspiration from the social sciences rather than legal history. The court roll studies published in that period generated much methodological debate about use of these records to study peasants and their communities. Nonetheless, in most of those studies, consideration of the manor court as a legal forum first and foremost, or of the implications of reliance on a legal source to study social and economic history, was secondary to analysis of the data in the rolls. More recently, though, scholars have started once again to look at the court roll from the perspective adopted by Maitland in hisSelect Pleas in Manorial and Other Seigniorial Courts. These historians are concerned with defining and characterizing “customary law”: that is, with the nature and principles of the law applied in manor courts; the extent to which those principles were malleable or unchanging; the relationship between the rulings pronounced in the manor courts and those recorded in other areas of the legal system, most importantly the common law courts; and the machinery of manor courts with respect to procedures, personnel, and record keeping.

The Encounters of Economic History and Legal History

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Harris
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Law ◽  
History And Theory

After the rise to dominance of the neo-classical school in economics in the 1920s and 1930s, legal historians manifested very little interest in economic theory. After the cliometric revolution of the early 1960s, most legal historians expressed declining interest in economic historians. After the rise of Critical Legal History and cultural legal history in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many legal historians showed diminishing interest in the economy. This trend was augmented by the expansion of law and economics as a leading jurisprudence and methodology within the law schools. Most legal historians viewed themselves as part of a camp in the law schools, whether of the humanities oriented scholars, of post modernists, or of critical scholars, who were antagonists of the law and economics camp. These legal historians often identified all economists with law and economics and further disassociated themselves from economic historians. Ironically, the less legal historians consider economic history, economic theory, and the economy itself as relevant to their purposes, the more economic historians are discovering the relevancy of the law and of legal history to theirs. This article suggests to legal historians that the time is ripe to revisit economic history and theory and to reconsider their long-established indifference toward them.

Law as Social History

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Laura F. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores two related themes embedded within the relationship between legal history and social history, focusing on the nineteenth century to highlight conceptual points that also apply more generally to other periods. First, it argues the field of legal history takes a broader understanding of the law than other historical fields. Moving beyond the written records, legal officials, and designated institutions usually associated with the law’s presence and influence, legal historians extend law into the realm of social history. As that scholarship shows, law flourished in many institutional contexts and even in rural byways and city streets, where it structured broad-reaching economic and cultural dynamics as well as the ordinary relationships of daily life. Second, the chapter argues that legal history changes our view of social history by exposing the law’s presence in places and relationships that most historians imagine to be far from remotely legal.

Legal Socialization and the Elements of Legitimacy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom R. Tyler ◽  
Rick Trinkner
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Justice ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Socialization Process ◽  
Legal Socialization ◽  
Rule Breaking ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The chapters in Part I discuss the two basic models for understanding the relationship between people and law: coercive and consensual. The consensual model relies upon people’s willingness to obey laws because they think it is appropriate and proper to do so. The belief that law and legal authorities are legitimate and ought to be voluntarily obeyed develops during the childhood and adolescent socialization process. A coercive model of authority relies upon the use of force and credible threats of detection and punishment for rule-breaking to promote compliance. As children mature they move through three spheres of authority: family, school, and juvenile justice. In each sphere children and adolescents can develop the belief that the law is legitimate, and feel a duty to defer to law or they can come to view the law as coercive and comply out of fear of punishment.

Globalising the History of Capital: Ways Forward

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jairus Banaji
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Merchant Capital ◽  
History Of ◽  
Atlantic Slavery ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractAnievas and Nişancıoğlu’s attempt to shift the terms of the debate about early modern capitalism by a major widening of its perspectives is a welcome move. Accepting this, the paper suggests that their argument can be more forcefully made if the theoretical residues of earlier traditions of Marxist historical explanation are purged from the way they expound that argument. The most ambivalent of these relates to their continued use of the idea of a ‘coexistence of modes of production’. This permeates the confused way they present Atlantic slavery. A second, comparable source of confusion concerns their description of the relationship between merchant capital and the absolutist state. The alliance between the modern state and mercantile capital is radically misrecognised thanks to an uncritical espousal of Anderson’s view of absolutism. The paper suggests that Anievas and Nişancıoğlu might have written a stronger book had they reconceptualised the economic history of capitalism by allowing for a whole epoch dominated by powerful groups of merchant capitalists. In conclusion, I argue (pace Marx) that the commercial capital of the later middle ages/early modern period was the first form in which production began to be subordinated to capital.

Legal History As Economic History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Political Economy ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Over the past century, legal history and economic history developed as separate fields of scholarship. Their separation reflects an understanding of law and economy as distinct objects that may be pulled apart and each analysed apart from the other. Yet, even assuming that law and economy are separable, it is undeniable that they interact. This chapter first maps the state of the field over the past several decades, identifying two major questions that have guided much of the scholarship on the border between legal and economic history. It then describes two of the theoretical frameworks available to legal historians for conceptualizing the relationship between law and economy. Finally, it argues that future work on the history of political economy should put aside measuring the impact of law on economy (and vice versa) and instead explore how the boundary between law and economy has been constructed and maintained over time.

Understanding Collective Property in the Chinese Context through the Lens of Community

2018 ◽  
pp. 152-176
Author(s):  
Ting Xu ◽  
Wei Gong
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
Collective Property ◽  
Property System ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter deals with the conceptualisation of collective property in the Chinese context. It is argued that this concept can be understood and defined through the lens of community via undertaking three methodological steps. The first step lays out the theoretical framework concerning the interplay between community and property. The second step examines the formation and transformation of the collective from a historical perspective. The final step analyses key cases concerning the relationship between membership of the collective and land rights. It is concluded that collective property in the Chinese context is a hybrid property system with permeable boundaries, and the closing commentary therefore questions the nature of the role that the law plays in sustaining collective property.

scholarly journals Pandemic, Exception and the Law: Notes on the Shattered Nomos of Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Cosmin Cercel
Keyword(s):  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Legal Normativity

In this article I propose a critical evaluation of the current European politico-legal landscape that unfolds under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. My aim is to off an analysis of the symbolic status of legality in this context and to reflect on its historical trajectory, by introducing it in a longer historical timescale than usually proposed as well as by insisting on the specific nexus between emergency legislation and authoritarian ideologies within Europe. In doing so I propose a new genealogy of the state of exception apt to articulate the relationship between the force of law, legal normativity, and ideology in modern capitalism. The thesis that I defend here is a simple one: the ongoing pandemic has operated a historical acceleration that the law, understood here as medium that articulates power symbolically in a public and ostensible manner, is not able to catch up with. To substantiate this thesis, I venture first to take stock of the existing theories, analyses and narratives on the relation between the pandemic and the politico-legal landscape of Europe. In doing so I shall focus fi on traditional constitutional law accounts and on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s criticism of the legal responses to the pandemic. Following this analysis, I move towards a situation of the pandemic within the sphere of the multiple crises befalling Europe that have become visible since 2015. At this stage I draw attention to the manifold layers of emergency legality and states of exception that have been sapping the liberal democratic nomos putatively defended within Europe. In a third move, I embark on a synoptical clarification of the relationship between law, ideology and the history of class struggle. In a fourth and last intervention I intend to assess the current nexus between the pandemic, exception and the law as a specific form of dissolution of the liberal nomos.

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