Pathways in Law and History

Voices. Pathways in Law and History is one of the three forms through which MILHIS Voices presents and reflects upon legal-historical research. It is devoted to the trajectories of inquiry, and to the processes through which historical knowledge of law is gradually shaped, rather than to definitive results or closed interpretations.

Each contribution focuses on a pathway—archival, methodological, intellectual, or interdisciplinary—bringing attention to the choices, passages, and detours that structure research over time. By foregrounding encounters with sources, research practices, and the circulation of ideas, Pathways shows how history and law intertwine through sustained scholarly work.

In this sense, Pathways emphasises continuity and connection. It traces the routes that link questions, materials, and perspectives, situating individual inquiries within broader research trajectories. Within the framework of MILHIS Voices, the section opens research processes to comparison and reflection, encouraging the interaction of different approaches while maintaining the specificity of each scholarly path.

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The first contribution to the section is entrusted to Mario Ascheri, who inaugurates Pathways in History and Law with an exemplary reflection on the meaning of research pathways in legal history and on the ways in which history and law intertwine over the longue durée. Starting from several key moments in his own scholarly itinerary, Ascheri reflects on the thematic and methodological choices that have guided his work over time, while also addressing the civic and public role of legal history in contemporary society.

Categories amidst Law and History

by Mario Ascheri – 12 February 2026

Writing a self-review is not easy; however, some of my recent works help to complete the generous profile drawn in 2014 by Paola Maffei and Gian Maria Varanini in their introduction to the four volumes of studies dedicated to me ¹. A considerable amount of work, in various directions, has indeed been carried out. I have worked on the history of legal procedure—especially civil procedure—with broad attention to jurists’ consilia and to judicial decisiones; on the State as an institution and on the sources of law; as well as on a number of legal institutions, ranging from judicial “peace” to the state of necessity (particularly in relation to epidemics). I have also dealt with sources of local law, and therefore in particular with municipal statutes; with the history of Tuscany, focusing especially on Siena and its medieval and early modern State; and with the Ligurian Riviera di Ponente, with Ventimiglia, autonomous Commune of the Genoese Republic.

These themes have not been pursued exclusively within the framework of the late Middle Ages. They have also led me to pause for broader reflection on the categories employed by historians and jurists, and on the actual scope of oppositions often taken for granted—such as the presumed absence of the medieval State versus its nineteenth-century omnipotence, or the supposed deep “turning points” from ius commune to codified law, and from autonomies to sovereignty. Through an interdisciplinary approach, it seemed appropriate to call for greater caution in the use of historiographical categories. Custom, for example, operates—and does so extensively—even and especially when jurists do not speak of it. One works among paradoxes and questionable antinomies. Caution is therefore necessary, and it is also a civic duty, since the discourse of historians of law and institutions influences—more than is often realized—general historians and, consequently, the common sense of citizens.

Perhaps the harsh years of the post-war period, during which I grew up amid deeply felt collective fears, led me to pursue a path that combined law and history. Perhaps it was a way to better understand how one might invoke the utilitas communis et publica, so forcefully reaffirmed in the late Middle Ages that shaped the cities we admire and still inhabit today. I needed to avoid losing sight of priorities, finding arguments for a commitment that I felt, first and foremost, to be ethical and political.

Mario Ascheri

Former Professor at the universities of Sassari, Siena and Roma Tre

Senior Fellow, University of California, Robbins Collection, Berkeley

Doctor h. c. Université de l’Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand)

Mangia d’Oro Siena 2003; San Segundin Ventimiglia 2003

1. Storia giuridica e storia istituzionale: una contaminazione positiva?, in Mescolare le carte e la storia. Come si studiano le istituzioni. Saggi per Guido Melis, ed. by A. Meniconi, F. Soddu, G. Tosatti, Bologna, il Mulino, 2023, pp. 279-293; Squilibri da eccesso… di successo? Dall’hortus conclusus di Siena, in Ex libris… ne pereant. Cultura libraria e archivistica tra Umanesimo e Rinascimento, Miscellanea…a Paolo Tiezzi Maestri, ed. by M. Sodi and M. Ascheri, Firenze, Olschki, 2023, pp. 11-21. A brief summary by Paola Maffei and Gian Maria Varanini at https://www.academia.edu/161281730/Studi_i_70_anni_4_vol_2014_in_Open_Access. ↩︎