Privacy in the process of early modern collective judging. Theoretical foundations and empirical perspectives
Lecture by Dr. Tobias Schenk
Abstract:
Using the example of the Viennese Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat) in the 17th and 18th centuries I want to show that the decision-making process of early modern central courts offers privacy studies a rich field of research that could provide important impulses for a legal history of Europe from a global historical perspective. This is because the decision-making process took place in a spatial-sociological field of tension between the conference room and the homes of the individual judges. In the homes, informal “contact systems” (Niklas Luhmann) can be observed, with which a stratified society dealt with the subsequent problems of functional differentiation. Patronage and gift exchange played a major role in these contact systems, which were characterised by pronounced competition of social and legal norms. Analysing these mechanisms, in which the judges’ wives also played an important role, contributes significantly to a better understanding of trial documents.
Bio:
2003: MA in history and political science (University of Münster); 2007: PhD in history (University of Münster); 2007–2009: training as an archivist (State Archive North Rhine-Westphalia, Marburg Archive School); since 2009: research associate in the archival cataloguing project „The Files of the Imperial Aulic Council”, run by Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Austrian State Archives and the University of Vienna.
Research Interests:
Legal history
Historical Organization Studies
History of Prussia
Jewish history
Selected Publications:
Wegbereiter der Emanzipation? Studien zur Judenpolitik des „Aufgeklärten Absolutismus“ in Preußen (1763–1812) (Quellen und Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte, vol. 39), Berlin 2010; Actum et judicium als analytisches Problem der Justizforschung. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf kollegiale Entscheidungskulturen am Beispiel des kaiserlichen Reichshofrats (Schriftenreihe der Gesellschaft für Reichskammergerichtsforschung, vol. 51), Wetzlar 2022; Knowledge of Production of Normativity at the Imperial Aulic Council. Towards a Procedural Perspective on Early Modern Legal Reasoning, in: Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History 32 (2024), 108–143.