The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Abstract

Catalog of an exhibition highlighting the Lillian Goldman Law Library’s outstanding collection of early Italian city statutes, rivaled by few other U.S. libraries and surpassed by none. These municipal codes governed the dozens of Italian city-states that arose in the Middle Ages and persisted until the reunification of Italy in the late 19th century. In their mixing of Roman law, local law, and pragmatic innovations, the Italian municipal statutes became the prototype of European civil law.