Overview

In Making Manslaughter, Susanne Pohl-Zucker offers parallel studies that trace the legal settlement of homicide in the duchy of Württemberg and the imperial city of Zurich between 1376 and 1700. Killings committed by men during disputes were frequently resolved by extrajudicial agreements during the late Middle Ages. Around 1500, customary strategies of dispute settlement were integrated and modified within contexts of increasing legal centralization and, in Württemberg, negotiated with the growing influence of the ius commune. Legal practice was characterized by indeterminacy and openness: categories and procedures proved flexible, and judicial outcomes were produced by governmental policies aimed at the re-establishment of peace as well as by the strategies and goals of all disputants involved in a homicide case. See inside the book.

Full Product Details

9789004218215

Table of Contents

Reviews

Pohl-Zucker's book, based on her deep archival study, makes significant contributions to legal, political, and social history of early modern Europe. It rejects top-town linear narratives of state building and social disciplining. Instead, we can see how ordinary people contributed to the outcome of cases and to the myriad ways that diverse governmental actors involved themselves in them. Making Manslaughter also shows that even the purportedly systematic Roman law adopted in Europe during this era was in fact ambiguous, inconsistently adopted and interpreted, and it did not fully replace earlier forms of legal and extralegal decision making. Pohl-Zucker's Making Manslaughter will be appreciated by experts on political will be appreciated by experts on political and social history in the Holy Roman Empire and Swiss Confederation, but also by legal historians of all stripes. Those wanting to understand the operations of early modern courts in the German-speaking lands will be richly rewarded by reading this book . Jesse Spohnholz, in Renaissance Quarterly, 62 (4), pp. 1495-1496.

""Pohl-Zucker’s book, based on her deep archival study, makes significant contributions to legal, political, and social history of early modern Europe. It rejects top-town linear narratives of state building and social disciplining. Instead, we can see how ordinary people contributed to the outcome of cases and to the myriad ways that diverse governmental actors involved themselves in them. Making Manslaughter also shows that even the purportedly systematic Roman law adopted in Europe during this era was in fact ambiguous, inconsistently adopted and interpreted, and it did not fully replace earlier forms of legal and extralegal decision making. Pohl-Zucker’s Making Manslaughter will be appreciated by experts on political will be appreciated by experts on political and social history in the Holy Roman Empire and Swiss Confederation, but also by legal historians of all stripes. Those wanting to understand the operations of early modern courts in the German-speaking lands will be richly rewarded by reading this book."" - Jesse Spohnholz, in: Renaissance Quarterly, 62 (4), pp. 1495-1496

Author Information

Susanne Pohl Zucker, Ph.D (1997), University of Michigan, is an independent historian living near Mainz (Germany). She has published articles on late medieval and early modern criminal justice in Württemberg and Zurich.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available