Harold J. Berman was Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory University, and Ames Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard University.
In the second volume of his magnum opus , Harold Berman intends to rescue from neglect Lutheran legal teachings, and does so by expanding his attention beyond Luther to include the works of the humanist theologian Philip Melanchthon, and the lesser-known Lutheran jurists, Johann Apel, Konrad Lagus, and Johann Oldendorp. His close reading of these jurists makes the most significant contribution to the study of early modern continental legal philosophy and its possible ramifications...Not only Europeans, but heirs of legal institutions and ways of thinking about states, rights, and religion that flowed from the European experience, need to heed the call to a more self-conscious and deliberate questioning of whether a narrative that traces the law's liberating trajectory from confessionalism and beyond nationalism is persuasive at all. Berman...provides provocative and rewarding investigations of where and how our current dilemmas with that narrative began. -- A. G. rieber Law and Social Inquiry