A Classic Study of Early Constitutional Law. First published in 1914, this is one of the most important studies of early constitutional law. Kern observes that discussions of the state in the ninth, eleventh and thirteenth centuries invariably asked whose rights were paramount. Were they those of the ruler or the people? Kern locates the origins of this debate, which has continued to the twentieth century, in church doctrine and the history of the early German states. He demonstrates that the interaction of "these two sets of influences in conflict and alliance prepared the ground for a new outlook in the relations between the ruler and the ruled, and laid the foundations both of absolutist and of constitutional theory" (4). "[A] pioneering and classic study." --Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, 106. Fritz Kern [1884-1950] was a professor, journalist and state official. From 1914 to 1918 he worked for the Foreign Ministry and the General Staff in Berlin. One of the leading medieval historians of his time, his works include Die Anfänge der Französischen Ausdehnungspolitik bis zum Jahr 1308 (1910) and Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter (1919).

The state is the most powerful and contested of political ideas, loved for its promise of order but hated for its threat of coercion. In this broad-ranging new study, Alan Harding challenges the orthodoxy that there was no state in the Middle Ages, arguing instead that it was precisely then that the concept acquired its force. He explores how the word 'state' was used by medieval rulers and their ministers and connects the growth of the idea of the state with the development of systems for the administration of justice and the enforcement of peace. He shows how these systems provided new models for government from the centre, successfully in France and England but less so in Germany. The courts and legislation of French and English kings are described establishing public order, defining rights to property and liberty, and structuring commonwealths by 'estates'. In the final chapters the author reveals how the concept of the state was taken up by political commentators in the wars of the later Middle Ages and the Reformation Period, and how the law-based 'state of the king and the kingdom' was transformed into the politically dynamic 'modern state'.