About the journal
A new journal for legal history
A journal for legal history as argument, as institutional memory, and as a way of understanding law across time.
Acta Juris Historici is being founded on the conviction that legal history deserves both close attention to the sources and serious engagement with the institutions, traditions, and arguments that shaped the law. The journal will publish work that knows the materials in detail while refusing to treat historical narrative as self-explanatory.
Its pages will be open to Roman law, canon law, medieval and early modern law, the history of codification, Chinese legal history, comparative legal history, and theoretical work that speaks to legal questions. The journal is currently in preparation; no issue has yet been published.
The journal is a Standard Law Academic journal and is editorially independent.
Aims & scope
The journal will publish original scholarship on legal history, with a preference for work that is grounded in the sources, analytically rigorous, or alert to the institutional consequences of legal change.
The journal’s scope is deliberately broad. It includes ancient and medieval law—Roman law, canon law, and medieval law; early modern and modern law and the history of codification; Chinese legal history; and comparative legal history. It also covers legal thought and institutions, historical method, and work that crosses disciplinary boundaries.
The journal does not prescribe a single method. It will publish doctrinal, theoretical, comparative, historical, empirical, and interdisciplinary work. What matters is a clear argument, serious engagement with the relevant law and literature, and a contribution that is accessible to an international readership.
What we plan to publish
- Research articles
- Review articles and review essays
- Shorter scholarly interventions
- Book reviews
- Proposals for special issues
- Work across doctrinal and contextual methods
Open access
The journal will publish open access, online, with no article processing charge (APC) at present. Any change to this position will be published clearly on this site.
What we look for
Every submission should make a clear argument, situate it in the existing literature, and explain why it matters. The journal will expect authors to take doctrine seriously, engage with jurisdictions other than their own where relevant, and write in a way that is accessible to readers outside their immediate field.
Legal history in context
The sources are the centre of the journal, not its boundary.
Law is a technical achievement and a social institution at once, and both have a history. The journal is interested in each dimension. It will publish close analysis of sources, rules, and institutions, and it will also publish work that asks how those rules and institutions operated in practice, how they developed over time, and how they compare across legal traditions.
The journal is particularly interested in work that explains why an institutional choice mattered: for the people who lived under it, for the coherence of the system that sustained it, for the distribution of authority and advantage, or for the way a legal tradition understood its own past. Comparative and theoretical work is welcome where it does argumentative work rather than serving as decoration.
A note on method
The journal does not require authors to adopt a particular theoretical stance. It asks only that the method be explicit, the materials be identified, and the limits of the argument be acknowledged.
Editorial formation
The editorial board is being formed; names will appear here as each appointment is confirmed.
Editorial appointments will be published only after they are confirmed and consented to. The full editorial team and advisory board will be published here before the journal opens for submissions.
The founding team takes shape role by role: editor-in-chief first, then deputy editors, section editors, and the international advisory board.
Editorial roles in preparation
- Editor-in-Chief
- Deputy editors
- Section editors for ancient and medieval law
- Section editors for early modern and modern law
- Section editors for Chinese legal history
- Section editors for comparative legal history
- Book review editor
- International advisory board
Expressions of interest
Scholars interested in contributing to the journal's editorial development are welcome to express interest once contact details and procedures are announced.
Launch information
The journal is in preparation. Launch, call, editorial, and issue details will be published here when available.
| Item | Current status |
|---|---|
| Journal status | In preparation |
| Society | Standard Law Academic |
| Publication model | Open access, online |
| Article processing charge (APC) | None at present |
| Inaugural issue | In preparation |
| Editorial appointments | To be announced |
| Call for papers | Information to be added |
| Submission information | To be added |
| Peer review model | Information to be added |
| ISSN | Information to be added |
The table above is kept current; each entry will be updated as soon as it is confirmed.
Discovery & indexing
The journal is in preparation, publishing open access online. After the first issue, the editorial office will prepare applications to the relevant legal and multidisciplinary indexes. Indexing and archiving details will be published here once they are confirmed.
The journal's metadata and content will be designed to support discovery and long-term preservation. Full details of indexing and archiving arrangements will be published once they are confirmed.
Indexing and archiving
Indexing, archiving, and preservation arrangements will be published here once they are confirmed. The journal's status pages are updated as the launch develops.
Development stages
The journal is being developed in stages. Dates will be announced when they are set.
Scope and planning. The journal’s disciplinary range, editorial scope, and open-access publication model are established.
Editorial formation. The founding editorial team is being assembled. Appointments will be announced when confirmed.
Call for papers and submission information. Submission guidelines and the first call for papers will be published before submissions open.
Inaugural issue. The first issue is in preparation. Its contents and publication details have not been announced.
Contact
Contact details for the editorial office will be published when they are confirmed. The journal is a Standard Law Academic journal and is editorially independent. Correspondence will be invited once those details are published.
Contact information
Editorial contact details: to be announced.
For information about the journal's scope and status, please use the pages on this site. They will be updated as the launch develops.