When: Tuesday, 30 May 2023, 3:00pm-4.30pm (UTC+2).
Where: Porthania Building, Room P545, University of Helsinki. You can also join us online via Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/66528154801?pwd=akVHejZQdGVSSzdGc0xqZjFKcjlSdz09
Meeting ID: 665 2815 4801
Passcode: 501093
Title: The English ‘Law of Succession’ as an Expression of European Legal Culture: The Story of Its Development
Abstract:
For lawyers from the European Continent, English law has always been ‘something strange and wondrous’. At every step they come across ‘legal institutions, procedures, and traditions which have no counterpart in the Continental legal world with which [they are] familiar’. Any attempt at understanding English law requires a study of its historical origins; for no other legal system such study is equally essential. For the law of succession that should be thought to be particularly true in view of the fact that it is widely regarded as ‘one of the most indigenous branches of the law’, constituting ‘a part of a country’s cultural goods’, and characterized by the stability of its regulations: a bastion of the legal material handed down to us from previous generations. It thus appears to be attractive to look at the development of the English law of succession. Today’s lecture intends to do so by way of an overview aimed at providing orientation. At the same time it is to be examined whether, or to what extent, it can be said to have evolved ‘in isolation from Europe’.