Seminar "Les matins du JPEG" - Eric Wenzel - Legal history: a resolutely interdisciplinary discipline

The Legal, Political, Economic and Management Sciences Laboratory is pleased to welcome as part of the "Matins du -JPEG" 2024-2025 :

Eric Wenzel
Lecturer in the History of Law at Avignon University

for a seminar session entitled :

Legal history: a resolutely interdisciplinary discipline

The history of law may appear to be a discipline in need of legitimacy: a 'historian' for positivist jurists, the legal historian becomes a 'jurist' for his fellow historians from the human sciences. In truth, this situation demonstrates the interdisciplinarity that is consubstantial with this speciality, which has been specific to continental European universities since the 19ᵉ century and whose foundations are not free of ideological issues. Indeed close to historical science, from which it borrows its methods for analysing archives, it nevertheless differs from it in terms of its own requirements, which underpin its legitimacy. While the aim of legal history is to explain the laws of the past in order to better understand the laws of the present (the very essence of law is linked to its history), it also aims to understand the social and cultural foundations on which past laws are based, which is why it has fruitful links with other social sciences (sociology, anthropology)... and even art history!
Interdisciplinarity is therefore the key word.

As this session is part of the "Interdisciplinarity" theme, the discussion will be led by a group.

The session will take place Friday 17 January 2025 at 10.00 am in room 1W48.