The intimate connection between medieval royal government and the administration of justice led to the emergence of a new generation of centralized law courts in early modern Europe, with a superior or even supreme jurisdiction. The contributions to this book seek to examine how such newly created or reformed central judicial bodies became integrated into the wider structures of jurisdiction within states, and how they related to other institutions of central governance such as parliaments or privy councils.

Since the nineteenth century, the legality principle has become an integral part of the Western rule of law and international human rights law. Although the nineteenth-century criminal law reforms were crucial everywhere, the changes took place at different times in different parts of the Western world, and for slightly different reasons. The studies of the volume, written by the foremost expert of comparative legal history, cover most of the Western world in both Europe and America.