Thomas Duve distinguished as Honorary Fellow of the ASLH

The American Society for Legal History has named Thomas Duve an Honorary Fellow – its highest distinction. The Society recognises outstanding scholars whose research has shaped the broad discipline of legal history and influenced the work of others. The Society honors Thomas Duve as an erudite and seemingly indefatigable historian who created new institutions and ways to promote the next generation of legal historians on a transnational level.

The Society emphasises that Thomas Duve's concept of "systems of normativity" has enabled a new perspective on the Iberian world in the long period of colonisation and decolonisation. His goal, a ‘global history of knowledge production’, spans legal history, canon law and social history, and it includes the voices of enslaved and indigenous men and women as well as those of Europeans. The Society underlines the influence Thomas Duve's approach has had on the development of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, which in recent decades has transformed itself from research focused on Europe into a ‘global powerhouse’ that trains and promotes scholars from different academic traditions and regions.

The text of the laudatory speech can be found here.