Empire of Law: Nazi Germany, Exile Scholars and the Battle for the Future of Europe By Kaius Tuori,. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 313. Cloth $110.00. ISBN 978-1108483636 .

Empire of Law: Nazi Germany, Exile Scholars and the Battle for the Future of Europe By Kaius Tuori. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 313. Cloth $110.00. ISBN 978-1108483636.

In the decades following the Second World War, the idea took root among West European jurists that Europeans shared a common legal heritage based on the legacy of Roman law. Where did this idea come from, and why did it find support among liberal and conservative intellectuals? Kaius Tuori provides an answer by examining the lives of five German-speaking scholars of Roman law who appealed to European legal unity in an age of cataclysms. Fritz Schulz and Fritz Pringsheim, persecuted on account of their Jewish family background, left Nazi Germany for exile in Britain, where they presided over a “veritable renaissance of Roman law” (268). Paul Koschaker remained in Nazi Germany and defended the relevance of Roman law during the Third Reich; after the Second World War, he argued that Roman law could serve as “a kind of relative natural law” for Europe (166). Franz Wieacker and Helmut Coing, who began their careers in Nazi Germany and flourished in West German academia, portrayed the autonomy of Roman jurisprudence and its culture of freedom as core elements of European legal unity. These scholars played a crucial role in establishing the “invented tradition” (19) of a common European legal tradition. Tuori...