Western Legal Revolution: Changes and Shifts

The legal revolution spawned by this intellectual shift is one with many traits that are unique to the West even to this day. Globalization and industrialization of the entire world hasn’t been strong enough to overcome the association with the formalized methodology of the rule of law and exclusively Western legal associations, structures, functions and intellectualisms. A huge set of concepts, entities and procedures that came out of the West’s 12th century creation of a legal system will likely remain exclusive to the West for as long as the West continues to exist as a concept¹.

Prior to the 11th century, there was no concept of a unified legal system with a structure of autonomous function and jurisdictionality. The intellectual revolution created as a result of the philosophical and social changes mentioned before and otherwise of the period, created new “legal concepts, entities, procedures, powers and agencies” - to quote “The Rise of Early Modern Science” by Toby Huff - and created a “model by which secular states [organized] their affairs, establish[ed] courts, elect[ed] officials and enact[ed] their own laws, in order to govern their political, economic and social domains.” These new found secular legal structures marked the inherent rise of codified law, which formulates a consistent and repeatable process of how things exist and function within the state. But alas, all this did not come to be overnight - the point shortly prior to this century, the King reigned over his territory with absolute dictatorship, legal structures, etc., were all irrelevant, as there was no structure of law - the King, and his small selection of decision makers decided, effectively on a whim, how things were, and how they should be²

The marked loss of the King’s power to assert control over all decisions, and thus, probably a formative factor in the development of modern codified law, is seen in the Investiture Controversy (1073-85). The Controversy, which occurred mostly through the never formalized Pope Gregory the VII claiming that the Roman church was the source of universal power, as it was founded by God, effectively eliminating investiture, by which the monarchy appointed new popes. King Henry IV responded by sending a letter directly to Pope Hildebrand Gregory, which has been documented by numerous sources to have started with: “Henry, king not through usurpation but through the holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand, at present not pope but false monk.”

Effectively, this letter started an internal war between the King and the Pope, which, eventually, forced the King to back down, until which point the new King, Henry the V, renounced the right to the crownship’s decision in investiture, thereby marking a symbolic end to the King’s ability to rule over all decision making, and sparking a social ability for protest and responsibility of governing powers.

The next essential development of this century with regard to legal powers is that of taxation. With the rise of codified law, brings the fall of ad-hoc taxation, arguably the most essential point to make from this entire era. The clearly divided powers of taxation with a set of strong, irrevocable checks and balances in modern legal tradition is a mark of the historical revolution coming out of this period, and unquestionably a significant one; the draw of ad-hoc taxation is unpredictability, and therefore, lack of confidence in business risk. This inherently and entirely stops even the lowest of risk business ventures, on grounds that the government has infinite power of absolutely demolishing taxation. Taxes are powerful, control of taxes is control of an economy, but, restricted, developed tax policy eliminates all fear with regard to the tax man from the business community. Of course, taxation policy doesn’t rise directly with the rise of codified law, and it took roughly 200 further years for tax policy to solidify in the West to the point where it was indeed business friendly.

Another major construction of the rise of real codified law is the development of the philosophical and social (and, obviously, legal) idea of the “corporation” — a unified group of people working together as one legal (and, social) entity. Such a rise of new “social actors” could, as Peter Drucker suggested, have been the “most potent social innovation since the middle ages,” and furthermore “created new social and economic dynamics that must be accounted for by revised social, economic and political theories,” to again borrow from the great Toby Huff book. It’s easy enough to see the first aspect, as to how corporations form an economic revolution, however, the new social dynamic created by having collective human entities acting as though they’re individuals in a marketplace or legal institution is an obvious direct cause for legal revolution.

1. If you examine the rise of the West as a central power, you’ll see that every century or so, the “West” nearly doubles in size, and no longer represents anything West with the inclusion of Australia, Japan, and some parts of civilized Africa in modern West analysis. It’s conceivable, that one day, the traits we call the West will be globalized. [↩]
2. This was socially accepted at the time, as the way things were supposed to be; as such, the people did not revolt, or rarely revolted, against even the most absurd of the crownship’s policies. [↩]

1. An Introduction
2. A Look at Technological Growth
3. Comparative Differences: Eastern Arab-Islam and the West
4. Western Legal Revolution: Changes and Shifts
5. Long-run Economies and the Results of Revolution
6. Further Reading
7. View all pages.

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