Formation of Legal Authority and Practices of Justice
"Droit wisigothique au VII siècle" by Carlos Petit Calvo
Le droit wisigothique des Wisigoths est une chose, la droite wisigothique des Wisigothistes en est une autre, et bien diverse. Mon intervention part de cette évidence pour proposer une interprétation générale du Liber iudiciorum (vers 654). Celle grande collection de textes de différentes périodes et de différents styles, unique par ses thèmes et son extension parmi les "leges barbarorum", est un amalgame colossal de la tradition juridique romaine avec des textes bibliques et canoniques, qui ne peut être lue sans l'aide des grands débats intellectuels qui ont balayé le monde méditerranéen au VIIe siècle.
Prof. Carlos Petit Calvo is Full Professor of Legal History and Comparative Law at the University of Huelva. He was fellow of the MPI für europäische Rechtsgeschichte (Frankfurt/Main), fellow of the Robbins Collection (UC Berkeley), former professor of Legal History in Sevilla and Barcelona (Autónoma). His main research interests include the history of the visigothic law and, in general, the historiography and history of legal disciplines.
"The early judges of al-Andalus: sources and representations" by Maribel Fierro Bello
Medieval Arab biographies have been proved to be often “less a factual record than a field of controversy” (J. Bray). The earliest biographical dictionary on Cordoban judges by Ibn Harith al-Khushani (d. 361/971) includes rich materials that allow us to explore how the process of Islamization in al-Andalus was closely linked with the spread of conceptions of justice that elicited debate and even rejection among some sectors of society, but which were necessary for the legitimatization of the ruler in a post-conquest scenario.
In my paper I will concentrate on how the early judges of al-Andalus (2nd/8th-3rd/9th centuries) were represented by Ibn Harith al-Khushani paying attention to issues such as where the judge administered justice, which type of cases were brought to the court, the relation with the ruler and the notables of the town and also with the legal scholars.
Prof. Maribel Fierro Bello is Research Professor at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC – Spain). Before her long and successful career at CSIC, she was former professor at Complutense University of Madrid. She was also visiting professor at Princeton University and Directeur d'études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her research focuses on the political, religious and intellectual history of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Islamic law (especially Malikism), the construction of orthodoxy and the persecution of heresies, and violence and its representation in Medieval Arabic sources.
