The dominant and deceptively simple theme of this book is the relationship between the moral environment of the courtroom and that of the society in which the court is situated. The volume ranges widely across time and space, from ancient Greece to twentieth-century Africa. As a consequence, it encompasses not only the highly professional legal systems of the Roman, later medieval and modern worlds, but also the relatively unprofessionalized courts of classical Athens and of the early Middle Ages and the alien, imposed legal systems of colonial Rhodesia and Kenya.

List of contributors; Preface; 1. Introduction Peter Coss; 2. The language of law in classical Athens S. C. Todd; 3. The autonomy of Roman law Andrew D. E. Lewis; 4. Local participation and legal ritual in early medieval law courts Wendy Davies; 5. Due process versus the maintenance of order in European law: the contribution of the ius commune Paul Hyams; 6. Inside the courtroom: lawyers, litigants and justices in England in the later middle ages Paul Brand; 7. 'Nemo mortalis cognitus vivit in evo': moral and legal conflicts in a Florentine inheritance case of 1442 Thomas Kuehn; 8. Law, litigants and the construction of 'honour': slander suits in early modern England Martin Ingram; 9. Story-telling and the social imagery of religious conflict in nineteenth-century French law courts Caroline Ford; 10. 'Their idea of justice is so peculiar': Southern Rhodesia 1890-1910 Diana Jeater; 11. Kenyatta's trials: breaking and making an African nationalist John Lonsdale; 12. Conclusion Chris Wickham; Index.