Medieval Church Law And The Origins Of The Western Legal Tradition A Tribute To Kenneth Pennington -

Pennington’s work shines most brightly in his recovery of procedural revolution. His magisterial studies on the ordo iudiciarius show how the Church, needing to adjudicate marriage, benefice, and heresy without recourse to ordeals or bloodshed, invented a rational system of written proofs, representation, and appeal. The adversarial trial, the role of the judge as arbiter rather than inquisitor (in principle, if not always practice), and the very idea of a legal "right" as something possessed by the lowly against the mighty—these were canonistic gifts to the West.

What sets Kenneth Pennington apart is his insistence on the continuity of that conversation. Where others saw a rupture between medieval and modern, he traced the thread from Gratian’s Decretum (c. 1140) to the procedural codes of contemporary Europe and America. He has shown that when a modern judge cites "natural justice" or an attorney objects to hearsay, they are unconsciously echoing glosses written in the margins of parchment codices eight centuries ago. Pennington’s work shines most brightly in his recovery

A Tribute to Kenneth Pennington