The Rule of Laws: A 4000-year Quest to Order the World

(Paperback, Main)

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'A fascinating, comprehensive study that forces us to think again about what law is, and why it matters ... For those who want to understand why human society has emerged as it has, this is essential reading' - Rana Miller, author of China's Good War

The laws now enforced throughout the world are almost all modelled on systems developed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During two hundred years of colonial rule, Europeans exported their laws everywhere they could. But they weren't filling a void: in many places, they displaced traditions that were already ancient when Vasco Da Gama first arrived in India.

Where, then, did it all begin And what has law been and done over the course of human history In The Rule of Laws, pioneering anthropologist Fernanda Pirie traces the development of the world's great legal systems - Chinese, Indian, Roman, and Islamic - and the innumerable smaller traditions they inspired.

Reviews

'Fascinating, insightful and gripping, The Rule of Laws provides a comprehensive exploration of the history underpinning our modern legal systems. A triumph' - The Secret Barrister

'An ambitious account of the rise and fall of the world's great legal systems ... richly informative and consistently thought-provoking .. Fernanda Pirie's work will command, and deserve, a wide readership' - Jonathan Sumption

'Exceptionally rich' - Andrew Stark

'The Rule of Laws offers a pathbreaking and stimulating account of how societies across different regions and epochs drew upon secular, sacred, and scholarly traditions to create laws that organized the lives of their citizens ... This expansive narrative challenges what we think we know about legal history and the assumptions we make about law's future' - Edward J. Watts, author

'The Rule of Laws is a fascinating, comprehensive study that forces us to think again about what law is, and why it matters ... For those who want to understand why human society has emerged as it has, this is essential reading' - Rana Mitter, author

Author Bio

Fernanda Pirie is professor of the anthropology of law at the University of Oxford. She is the author of The Anthropology of Law and has conducted fieldwork in the mountains of Ladakh and the grasslands of eastern Tibet. She previously spent almost a decade practising as a barrister.