Western Legal Tradition Timeline
(Terry Hutchinson, 2002)
Theory
Writers
Political Context
Legal Reasoning
Greeks
Aristotle
The
Nicomachean
Ethics
City-state
Romans
Cicero
De Re Publica
Republic
Roman Law
Middle AgesRenaissance
St Thomas
Aquinas
1224-1274
Summa
Theologia
Feudal system
Canon Law
Economic era of
Mercantile
Capitalism
Recourse to
timeless common
law principles
Comparative
Context
Natural Law
derived from
universal
moral
principles
First Agricultural
Revolution 1485European
colonisation of
Americas 1942
Reformation
Martin Luther
1483-1546
Seventeenth
Century
Thomas Hobbes
1588-1679
John Locke
1632-1704
Two Treatises of
Government
(1690)
English Civil War Declaratory
1642-1651
Theory – judges
declaring preexisting law
Hugo Grotius
1583-1645
De Jure Belli et
Pacis [On the
Law of War and
Peace] (1625)
Origins of
International law
1648.
Based on
universal laws of
nature
Samuel von
1
Pufendorf 16321694 De Jure
Naturae et
gentium (1672)
Eighteenth
Century
Age of Reason
Sir William
Blackstone 17231780
Commentaries on
the Laws of
England (1765-9)
American
Revolution 17751783
French
Revolution 1789
Beginning of
Rights based
Liberalism
US Bill of Rights
& French
Declaration of the
Rights of Man
Blackstone’s
Rules for the
application of law
in conquered
territories1770 Australia
‘settled’ not
conquered
Twentieth
Century
Revival of
Natural Law
John Finnis
1940- Natural
Law and Natural
Rights (1980)
WW 1
1914-1918
WW 2
1939-1945
MIEA v Teoh
(1995) 183 CLR
273
Rights of the
Child
Human Rights
Agreements
Beginning of
economic era of
Industrial
Capitalism
Law as science
No necessary
connection
between law and
morality
Codification of
laws in Europe
Common law use
of precedent
syllogistic
reasoning – law
applied in a
mechanical
manner
formalism
Industrial
Revolution
Positivism
Legal rules
created by
human
institutions
Eighteenth
Century
Age of Reason
Nineteenth
Century
David Hume
1711-1776
An Enquiry
Concerning
Human
Understanding
(1748)
Jeremy Bentham
1748-1832
An Introduction
to the Principles
of Morals and
Legislation
(1789)
Bentham’s
Utilitarianism –
‘greatest good for
the greatest
number’
John Austin
1790-1859
The Province of
Jurisprudence
Determined
(1832)
Austin’s The
Law is objective
Existence of law
and value free
is one thing; its
merits or demerits
another’
Development of
contract based
societies
2
Twentieth
Century
HLA Hart 19071992
The Concept of
Law (1961)
‘Strict legalism’
1952
Owen Dixon CJ
High Court
SGIC v Trigwell
(1978) 142 CLR
617
US Legal Realism
1930s
Oliver Wendel
Holmes
Distinction made
between public
and private realm
of law
Industrial
Revolution 17601820
French
Revolution
Protection of
individual vis-àvis State
Liberalism
Primacy of the
individual in
society
Eighteenth
Century
Age of Reason
Two World Wars
Adam Smith
1723-1740
Inquiry into the
Nature and
Causes of the
Wealth of
Nations (1776)
‘classical’
political
economist
Importance of
private property
Nineteenth
Century
John Stuart Mill
1806-1873
On Liberty
(1859)
Welfare
Liberalism 1870Mills Harm to
others’ principle
Twentieth
Century
Leonard
Hobhouse
1864-1929
Liberalism
(1911)
A kind of social
liberalism derived
from
Utilitarianism
Milton Friedman
1912 –
John Keynes
1883-1946
The End of
Laissez Faire
(1926)
Ayn Rand 19051982
John Rawls
International law
permitting use of
force in
international
relations
Contracts
enforced strictly
Equitable
doctrines applied
pedantically
Classical Liberal
Theory and
Night-watchman
State UK
parliament 18321870
Donognue v
Stevenson
[1932] AC 562
Neighbour
Principle
Industrial
Regulation –
Safety, Children
Wages
Friedrich August
von Hayek 18991992 The Road to
Serfdom (1944)
UN Charter 1945
– Outlawing force
in international
relations
Rand’s
Individualism,
Laissez faire
Capitalism,
3
1921A Theory of
Justice (1972)
Neo-Classical
Liberalism
Robert Nozick
1938Anarchy, State
and Eotopia
(1974)
Ronald Dworkin
1931Taking Rights
Seriously (1977)
Economic
Analysis of
Law – Law
should be
economically
efficient
---maximazing
the wealth of
society
(Richard
Posner)
In the footsteps
of John Locke,
Adam Smith,
David Hume,
Jeremy Bentham,
JS Mill from the
SeventeenthNineteenth
Centuries
Twentieth
Century
Ronald Coase
Coase Theorem
(1959)
The Firm, the
Market and the
Law (1988)
Guido Calabresi
The Cost of
Accidents
(1970)
Richard Posner
Economic
Analysis of Law
(1922)
Critical Legal
StudiesCritiques
Liberalism
Law
advantages the
powerful in
‘Market-oriented’
GovernmentsPresident Ronald
Reagan USA,
Prime Minister
Margaret
Thatcher UK
Privatisation
Corporation
Hilmer Reform
US Legal Realism
1930s
Julius StoneAustralian
Realism
Decolonisation
Civil Rights
Movement
Post-Industrial
Age
1940s Chicago
School
1960- Public
Choice Theory
SelfDetermination in
international Law
1975
Human Rights
Conventions
The law is not
objective, but
based in
Liberalism
Growth of
multinational
corporations
Dworkin’s
Rights-based
Liberalism
1972 Withdrawal
of Australian
troops from
Vietnam
Roberto M.
Unger
The Critical
Legal Studies
Movement (1986)
Mark Tushnet
Milirrpum v
Nabalco (1971)
17 FLR 141
Terra nullius
1989 The Berlin
Wall separating
Anti-formalism in
the High Court:
1986 Explosion
of nuclear power
station at
4
society
Red, White, and
Blue: A Critical
Analysis of
Constitutional
Law (1988)
East Germany
fromWest
Germany is
opened
Mabo v
Queensland
(No.2) (1992) 175
CLR 1
Native Title
Chernobyl
FeminismLaw
advantages
men in society
Carol Smart
Feminism and the
Power of Law
(1989)
Carol Gilligan
In a Different
Voice (1982)
Catherine
MacKinnon
Toward a
Feminist Theory
of the State
(1989)
Regina Graycar
The
Hidden
Gender of Law
(1990)
Margaret Davies
Asking the Law
Question (1994)
1970s Equal pay
for equal work in
Australia
Liberal Feminism
AntiDiscrimination
and equity
approaches
Cultural
Feminism
Communication
and technology
explosion
Critical Race
Theory
Law
advantages
particular
racial groups
Late twentieth
Century
Twenty-first
Century
PostModernism
Rejection of
common
experience/
Subjectivity
Late Twentieth
Century
Government
funding for child
care
Radical Feminism Globalisation
Kimberly
Crenshaw
Critical Race
Theory
(1995)
Justice Mary
Gaudron
appointed to High
Court 1987
R v Lavallee
[1990] 1 SCR 852
Battered Woman
Syndrome
Wik People v Qld
(1996) 187 CLR
1 Pastoral leases
and native title
Australian Law
Reform
Commission
Report on the
Recognition of
Aboriginal
Customary Laws
1986
Masciantonio v R
(1995) 183 CLR
58
Ethnicity and the
ordinary person
Increasing use of
the internet
Growth of Global
economies
Larissa Behrendt
Richard Delgado
Critical Race
Theory: An
Introduction
(2001)
Racial
Discrimination
Act 1975 (Cth)
Native Title Act
1993 (Cth)
Mary Joe Frug
Posmodern Legal
Feminism
(1924)
Jean François
Lyotard
‘Answering the
Question: What
is
1991 Soviet
Union dissolved
Emergence of
Social Democrat
GovernmentsClinton in US,
Blair in UK,
5
Postmodernism?’
(1984)
Costas Douzinas,
Ronnie
Warrington and
Shaun McVeigh
Postmodern
Jurisprudence
(1991)
Schroeder in
Germany
Terrorism
2001 World
Trade Centre
attack
6