LAW AND REVOLUTION VOL.2 - THE IMPACT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATIONS ON THE WESTERN LEGAL TRADITION

For those interested in the ongoing debates about the social consequences of the Protestant Reformation for subsequent Western history, this book of great learning is a welcome contribution to the literature. [It] has also been a much anticipated book, coming now twenty years after Harold Berman's path-breaking first installment, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. In the present volume, Berman continues his provocative analysis of theological and ecclesiastical roots of the legal tradition that has been developing in the West for nearly a millennium, but that he fears is presently in crisis...This second volume of Law and Revolution is a work of vast erudition that few other scholars would be capable of producing. The synthesis of legal and theological scholarship, as well as the integration of intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political developments, are crucial to the claims of this book and are impressive throughout. The author's claims are persuasively argued and one can confidently conclude that scholars working on related issues in the future cannot safely ignore his conclusions.