Harwick and Root on The Feudal Origins of the Western Legal Tradition @C_Harwick @hiltonroot

Cameron Harwick, SUNY College, Brockport, and Hilton L. Root, George Mason University, School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs; George Mason University, Schar School of Policy and Government, have published The Feudal Origins of the Western Legal Tradition at 70 Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Ordo) 3 (2020). Here is the abstract.

This paper draws a distinction between ‘communitarian’ and ‘rationalist’ legal orders on the basis of the implied political strategy. We argue that the West’s solution to the paradox of governance – that a government strong enough to protect rights cannot itself be restrained from violating those rights – originates in certain aspects of the feudal contract, a confluence of aspects of communitarian Germanic law, which enshrined a contractual notion of political authority, and rationalistic Roman law, which supported large-scale political organization. We trace the tradition of strong but limited government to the conflict between factions with an interest in these legal traditions – nobles and the crown, respectively – and draw limited conclusions for legal development in non-Western context

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.