The European Legal Development Project

The European Legal Development project examined the factors that shape the development of legal systems in Europe. It was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and lasted from 1 January 2005 until 31 December 2007.

The topic of legal development is broad and, to make it manageable, we planned a programme of work which has built up from a number of case studies and will move towards a more general analysis and conclusions. Although we were concerned with legal development and many of those involved in the project are lawyers, we were also concerned to include and benefit from the insights of historians, sociologists and scholars in other disciplines.

We chose liability for fault 1850 to 2000 as our major area of study. Around 1850, there were many similarities in approaches to liability for fault across the legal systems of Western Europe. But since then, there has been significant divergence. Our interest was first to chart the changes and then to seek the explanations for what happened.

As a first stage, we worked on six areas which illustrate the general theme of liability for fault and relate to its role in relation to major changes that have occurred in society. For a description of each project and the outcomes related to it click on the project name below:

• Legal Doctrine;
• Medical Liability;
• Product Liability;
• Relations between Neighbours;
• Technological Change;
• Traffic and Railways.

The research involved scholars from a range of countries, in particular, England and Scotland, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Austria and Italy. Each working group drew on the expertise of both senior and more junior scholars familiar with different European legal systems, and contains a mixture of comparative lawyers and legal historians.


The project progressed to a second stage focussing on three themes that examine factors that have shaped legal development in the fields studied in the first stage projects. These covered:

• Institutions and Professions;
• The Influence of the Economy;
• Legal and Social Philosophy. 

We held a conference to publicise the results achieved by the Project in December 2007, which was open to a wide community of scholars. For further information please contact cels@law.cam.ac.uk.

The papers arising from these projects were published by Cambridge University Press.