The Jurisprudence of Legal Humanism and Natural Law (15th to 17th Centuries)
Under this body of jurisprudence, we search for signs of interest in the inner self in the doctrine and legal scholarship of early modernity in the Germanies and England. Our focus will be on theoretical texts such as the work of Donnellus and Althusius. We may also extend our research to examine the writings of members of the 16th century School of Salamanca (also known as the ‘late scholastics’) since they had a significant influence on lawyers such as Grotius. Patrick is leading the work on this body.
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The Roots of Intellectual Property Law
One limb of our work in this area is examining how the late 16th/early 17th centuries was a pivotal period in the history of IP law. Legal developments in this period can be seen as a sign of the socio-cultural turn towards the inner self. At the Law and Humanities Roundtable in Verona in July 2023, Patrick presented preliminary research on this topic.
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Early Modernity's Turn to the Inner Self: Evidence in Legal Scholarship
Patrick is currently searching for evidence of early modernity's turn to the inner self in the legal scholarship of Hugo Donnellus (1527–1591) and Johannes Althusius (1557–1638), amongst other lawyers.
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Laying the groundwork for the research under the second objective of the project, Patrick is also studying contemporary works of literature, philosophy and theology. For instance, one illuminating work is St Teresa of Avila’s El Castillo Interior (The Interior Castle), a book written in 1577 and one which had a significant influence on Descartes. He is currently writing up this research aiming to publish a paper on this topic later in 2024 or early 2025.
