A Raid on the Inarticulate

Abstract

Chapter 2 offers an overview of the historical development of the language of law from Euripides to Herder and into the twentieth century, not out of nostalgia to the halcyon days of the unity of law and the humanities, but to show jurists what brought them where they are now. It also provides an overview of the development of the process of differentiation of law, i.e. from the unity brought about by the rediscovery of the Corpus Iuris Civilis in the eleventh century to the diversity occasioned by the rise of national legal systems culminating in the nineteenth century, and from law as an autonomous discipline to the interdisciplinarity of the “Law and…” movements from the late twentieth century onwards.