“Agreement Supersedes Law, and Love Judgment:” Legal Flexibility and Amicable Settlement in Anglo-Norman England

Abstract

The anonymous author of theLaws of Henry I (Leges Henrici Primi)seems to undercut the value of the laws and courts of early-twelfth-century England by making a number of pessimistic comments about the capacity of formal legal proceedings to render justice. At a few points in this treatise, probably completed shortly after 1108, he also voices a preference for friendly agreement. Noting that similar predilections were widespread in medieval Europe, many recent scholars have seized on one of the author's remarks that explicitly compares these two approaches to conflict resolution by proclaiming:Pactum enim legem uincit et amor iudicium, which is translated by L. J. Downer, the work's most recent editor, as, “For an agreement supersedes law and amicable settlement a court judgment.” Ever since Stephen White and Michael Clanchy used this Latin sentence as, respectively, a title and an opening epigram in influential essays written over 25 years ago, it has become a scholarly commonplace, epitomizing what is now often seen as a deep-seated medieval preference for settling disputes through informal compromise. Most scholars that refer to this aphorism, however, use it merely as an illustrative device, without exploring this provocative assertion's meaning in its original textual setting. When considered in light of theLeges Henrici Primi(henceforth:LHP) as a whole and this work's wider context, this statement proves more revealing of complex contemporary attitudes about agreements, conflict resolution, and law than the frequent reference to what is taken to be a categorical declaration of the superiority of friendly concord might suggest.