Law and the Rise of Capitalism

by Michael Tigar

Overview

Against a backdrop of seven hundred years of bourgeois struggle, eminent lawyer and educator, Michael E. Tigar, develops a Marxist theory of law and jurisprudence based upon the Western experience. This well-researched and documented study traces the role of law and lawyers in the European bourgeoisies's conquest of power and in the process complements the analyses of such major figures as R.H. tawney and Max Weber. Using a wide frange of primary sources, Tigar demonstrates that the legal theory of insurgent bourgeoisie predated the Protestant Reformation and was a major ideological ingredient of the bourgeois revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583670309
Publisher:	Monthly Review Press
Publication date:	06/01/2000
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Micahel Tigar has worked for over fifty years with movements for social change as a human rights lawyer, law professor, and writer. He has taught at law schools in the United States, France, South Africa, and Japan, and is Emeritus Professor at Duke Law School and American UniversityWashington College of Law. He has authored or co-authored fourteen books, three plays, and scores of articles and essays. His book, Law and the Rise of Capitalism, first published by Monthly Review Press, has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish, and Chinese.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	7
	Introduction to the Second Edition	9
Part I	Law and the Capitalist Rise to Power: an Overview
1.	The Merchant as Rebel	19
2.	The Backdrop of the New Legal Institutions	23
Part II	The Merchants Seek a Place in the Feudal Order (1000-1200)
3.	Introduction	61
4.	The Crusades: Seizure of Trade Routes and Spread of Bourgeois Ideology	65
5.	Venice and Amalfi: Between East and West	79
6.	Some Origins of Urban Culture	83
7.	Transport by Land and Sea	97
8.	Popes and Merchants	101
9.	The Bourgeoisie in 1200	109
Part III	Bourgeois Lawyers, Royal Power, and Urban Development (1200-1400)
10.	Introduction	115
11.	Beaumanoir and Others: The Theoreticians of a New Order	119
12.	The Merchant Capital of Grasse	155
13.	Peasant Rebellion and Land Law	165
Part IV	The Bourgeois Ascendancy (1400-1600)
14.	Introduction	171
15.	Thomas More and the Destruction of the Medieval Vision	175
16.	Recasting the Law of Real Property	183
17.	Contract: A Study of Law and Social Reality	195
Part V	Bourgeois Victory (1600-1804)
18.	France: The Triumph of the Third Estate	211
19.	England: The Techniques of the Common Law	231
Part VI	Insurgency and Jurisprudence
20.	The Development of Legal Ideology	247
21.	Leading Schools of Legal Thought	257
22.	The Jurisprudence of Insurgency	273
	Afterword
	Legal Ideology Today	291
	Human Rights, the Nation-State, and International Law: From Grotius to Bentham	295
	U.S. Constitutionalism and its Anomolies	305
	Enforcing Human Rights Internationally: From Nuremberg to Pinochet	312
	The Jurisprucence of Insurgency Revisited	319
Appendix	Foreword to the First Edition	327
	Bibliography	331
	Index	341

Editorial Reviews

Tigar (Washington College of Law, American U.) has written a new introduction and extended afterword that update this Marxist analysis of law and jurisprudence, originally published in 1977. The study traces the role of law and lawyers in the rise of the European bourgeoisie. The new material discusses human rights issues and social movements over the past two decades, including political prisoners and the death penalty. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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