Legal History

The Illinois Legal History Program seeks to further knowledge and appreciation of legal history through an ambitious series of workshops, conferences, and public lectures. Since its formation in 2004, the Program has hosted numerous distinguished scholars in its workshop series. With a particular emphasis on American, British, and comparative legal-historical scholarship, the Program draws upon the intellectual expertise of numerous faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Students who study legal history at the College of Law enjoy access to a wide range of curricular offerings, a rich set of online legal resources, and an impressive collection of rare legal-historical materials in the College of Law’s Albert E. Jenner Jr. Memorial Law Library.

Director

Richard J. Ross – David C. Baum Professor of Law and Professor of History

Program Events

Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History

The Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History gathers to discuss the comparative legal history of the Atlantic world in the period c. 1492 to 1815. The one-day symposium brings together law professors, historians, and social scientists to explore a particular topic in comparative legal history, broadly understood. We traditionally meet at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

The symposium is overseen by Professor Richard Ross. Funding has been provided by the University of Illinois College of Law.

Law, Theology, and the Moral Regulation of “Economy” in the Early-Modern Atlantic World

Friday, March 25, 2022; Towner Fellows’ Lounge, Newberry Library, Chicago 

Organized by: Brian Owensby (University of Virginia) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign)

The time is long past when the Western world’s emergent commercial culture could be understood solely in terms of a protestant ethos or the division between commerce and social morality occasioned by the Protestant Reformation. Scholarship has shown that “modern” ideas regarding commerce and “economics” had their roots in late-medieval Catholic thought and in neo-scholastic ideas that blended theology, justice, and law. It is clear as well that the rise of commercial thinking was not a linear intellectual development. Protestants and Catholics alike, facing the moral and social implications of novel “economic” relations, undertook deep theological and legal reflections regarding unbridled, competitive, exchange-oriented gain seeking. Many of these concerns were raised in the context of Europe’s westward expansion to the New World. Usury, just price, interest, legal personality, slavery, reciprocity, property, cases of conscience, doubts regarding self-regulating mechanisms, concerns for the poor—all figured in a vibrant legal discourse that simultaneously elaborated and critiqued a set of ideas regarding human economy that became dominant between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. This conference will bring together historians, legal scholars, and social scientists to investigate law’s historical role in enabling and regulating behaviors now recognized as foundational to modern economies.

Conference Schedule

9:00 Welcome: Brian Owensby (Virginia, History) and Richard Ross (Illinois, Law and History)           

9:05 to 10:35: Panel: Moral Regulation of Market Activity

  • Wim Decock (UCLouvain, Law): “Moral Regulation of the Market between Scholasticism and Modern Natural Law: The Case of Pedro de Oñate’s De Contractibus(1646)”
  • Mark Peterson (Yale, History): “Market Regulation in Colonial Boston: Exploring a Historical Puzzle”
  • Elvira Vilches (Duke, Romance Studies): “Moral Economies and the Early Modern Iberian Book Trade”
  • Commentator: Laurent Mayali (Berkeley, Law)
  • Chair: Richard Ross (Illinois, Law and History)

10:35 to 10:50: Refreshment Break

10:50 to 12:20: Panel: Money and the Common Good

  • Regina Grafe (European University Institute, History): “All that Happened Below 5 Percent: Religious Endowments, Credit, and Interest Rate Discrimination in Colonial Spanish America”
  • David Lantigua (Notre Dame, Theology): “Native Americans, European Commerce, and the Providential Nature of Money”
  • Simon Middleton (William and Mary, History): “Country Pay and Current Money Conventions in the Seventeenth-Century North American Colonies”
  • Commentator: Carl Wennerlind (Barnard, History)
  • Commentator and chair: Robert Morrissey (Illinois, History)

12:20 to 1:50: Lunch: Participants and audience members are invited to try the restaurants in the neighborhood around the Newberry.

1:50 to 3:10: Panel: Boundaries of Capital, Contract, and Usury

  • Paolo Astorri (Copenhagen, Law): “Business Regulation in Sixteenth-Century Spain and Germany: Catholic and Lutheran Teachings on the Five Percent Contract”
  • Luisa Brunori (Université de Lille-Cnrs, Law): “The Turning Point of Early Modern Scholasticism on Company Law: Theology Facing 16th Century Transatlantic Mercantile Practice”
  • Commentator: Dwight Codr (Connecticut, English)
  • Chair: Brian Owensby (Virginia, History)

3:10 to 3:25: Refreshment Break

3:25 to 4:55 Panel: Society, Economy, and the Vulnerable

  • Michelle Molina (Northwestern, Religious Studies and History): “Sacramental Logics on the Jesuit Hacienda”
  • Brian Ownesby (Virginia, History): “‘All Human Life and Health Depend on the Help of Others’: Debates on Poor Relief and Society in Sixteenth-Century Spain and England”
  • Steven Pincus (Chicago, History): “The Ideological Context of Governor Edward Trelawny of Jamaica’s Abolitionism”
  • Commentator: Brodwyn Fischer (Chicago, History)
  • Commentator and chair: Karen Graubart (Notre Dame, History)

5:00 Adjourn

Past Symposiums on Comparative Early Modern Legal History

2017-18 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
Arguing for the Rule of Law: Using the Hebrew Bible and Caricatures of Foreigners in British and Spanish America
Friday, October 26, 2018; Newberry Library, Chicago 
Organized by: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (University of Texas at Austin) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign)

2015-16 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
Anglicization of Law and through Law: Early Modern British North America, India, and Ireland Compared
Friday, April 8, 2016
Organized by Jane Ohlmeyer (Trinity College, Dublin), Richard Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Philip Stern (Duke University)

2014-15 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
Meanings of Justice in New World Empires: Settler and Indigenous Law as Counterpoints
Friday, October 10, 2014
Organized by Brian Owensby (University of Virginia) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2012-13 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
Law and the French Atlantic
Friday, October 5, 2012
Organized by Allan Greer (McGill University) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2010-11 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
The Struggle for Land: Property, Territory, and Jurisdiction in Early Modern Europe and the Americas
Friday, April 8, 2011
Organized by Tamar Herzog (Stanford University) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2009-10 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
New Perspectives on Legal Pluralism
Friday, April 23, 2010
Organized by Lauren Benton (New York University) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2008-09 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
The Law of Nations and the Early Modern Atlantic World
Friday, April 3, 2009
Organized by Eliga Gould (University of New Hampshire) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2007-08 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
Criminal Justice in the British Atlantic World, 1500-1850
Friday, February 29, 2008
Organized by Bruce Smith (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2006-07 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
Law, Religion, and Social Discipline in the Early Modern Atlantic World
Friday, October 6, 2006
Organized by Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2005-06 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History
Membership in Communities and States in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Legal Rules, Social Judgments, and the Negotiation of Citizenship
Friday, October 14, 2005
Organized by Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)