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Título: MEDIEVAL LAW AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE STATE
Autor: HARDING, ALAN
Año: 2002
Género: TEORÍA POLÍTICA
Formato: PDF

The state is the most powerful and contested of political ideas, both loved for its promise of order and hated for its threat of coercion. This book shows how the idea first emerged from medieval systems for the administration of justice and enforcement of peace. These provided new models of government from the centre, successfully in France and England, less so in Germany. The law courts and legislation of French and English kings are described establishing public order, defining rights to property and liberty, and structuring commonwealths by ‘estates’. In the final chapters it is shown how the concept of the state was used by political commentators in the wars of the late Middle Ages and Reformation period, and how the law-based ‘state of the king and the kingdom’ began to be transformed into the politically dynamic ‘modern state’.

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