It turns out that Harold Berman has written a a second volume of Law and Revolution, subtitled “The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition.” Volume 1, “The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition,” for those who don’t know, was published in 1984 and provided an extraordinary survey, synthesis, and argument about the development of western legal thought from the Papal Revolution of the 11th and 12th centuries onward. It weaves together institutional, intellectual, religious, social, and economic history, and is one of the most valuable books I’ve ever read. (Jeremy Waldron first told me to read it; and, later, when he learned I hadn’t yet, told me again.) I don’t know what its reputation is among medievalists, but I think legal historians are pretty uniformly impressed by it (though the book is critical of what were then established ways of doing legal history).
Harvard University Press describes Volume II as being “long-awaited.” For my part I had no idea that it was in the works the book that in retrospect we’ll call Volume I stands alone just fine, and it’s hard to believe that the same person could gain an equal level of mastery over early modern materials that Volume I shows over medieval ones. Had I known, however, I would have been among the awaiters. In any event, now I’ve got my copy, and it immediately moves to the top of my to-read pile.
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