In search of the humanity of civil law in France between ʼ700 and ʼ800: initial reflections

Abstract

This research is the first stage of an itinerary on the unfolding of the concept of ‘humanity of law’ in the civil-law reflection of liberal Europe. The appeal to humanity, widely recurrent in the discourses of criminal lawyers and internationalists, is instead less frequent in the more traditional field of civil law. The aim of this work is to share initial reflections on this minor resonance, starting from the French legal literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with reference to certain categories of ‘fragile’ subjects.