History of Private Law

Date

Every Friday from 12:15 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.
 

Course format

The course will be held in person with live streaming.
The Zoom link can be found in Olat.

Office hours

Starting in September 2025, office hours will be held online on Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. or by appointment. 

Please send requests for appointments to elisabetta.fiocchi@ius.uzh.ch.
 

Required reading

The lecture includes reading primary sources as well as critical treatises on law and lawyers in their context.

The required reading is the script:
Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, Privatrechtsgeschichte, Skript, Schulthess, Zurich 2024.
 

Lecture content

The aim of the lecture is to trace the history of legal sources based on events in Europe and Switzerland from modern times to the 20th century. The lecture will use historical and comparative methods to provide a concrete understanding of the history of private law – from modern times, the so-called “Age of Reforms” and the age of codification to the 20th century.

This year's lecture will pay particular attention to the topic of “the position of women during the codification movement.” In addition, other topics in the history of private law will be explored in depth, including the legal institution of marriage, the development of legal subjects, and the emergence of various concepts of property. The complex historical relationships between public and private law will be examined from a European and global perspective through the study of sources of legislation, doctrine, and case law. The aim is to provide students with in-depth knowledge of the connections between legal history and the history of political, social, and legal ideas.

The scope of the investigation covers the connections between the legal situation, legislation, and jurisprudence; between the development of institutions and the development of law; between legal history and political and economic history; and between social and intellectual history.

The training and role of lawyers as well as the significance of scientific methods and legal doctrine will be analyzed.

The focus will be on the legal-historical examination of the person as a legal entity: the person in their territorial context; the person in their interpersonal relationships with legal relevance (marriage and divorce); the person in their relationships with the state or other political entities; and the person as a member of a particular society with specific characteristics.

We will develop and analyze the following key questions during the course: What role did the person play from a legal perspective in the development of specific systems of norms? How should the relationship between society, history, and law be understood? What role did codifications play? What impact did European codifications have on a global level? What role did property play in the legal debate? How were marriage and divorce conceived and implemented in the various legal-historical contexts?

The detailed program can be found on Olat.