Raoul Van Caenegem

Raoul Charles, Baron Van Caenegem (14 July 1927 – 15 June 2018) was a Belgian historian and jurist, and a leading scholar of European legal history. He is best known for comparative work on the divergence between common law and civil law, and for analyses of how power struggles between judges, legislators, and legal scholars shaped European legal institutions.

Biography Early life and education Van Caenegem was born in Ghent in 1927. He completed secondary education at Sint-Barbaracollege in Ghent. He studied at Ghent University, earning a doctorate in law in 1951 and a doctorate in history in 1953, and regarded medievalist François Louis Ganshof as his principal mentor.

Academic career From 1954 Van Caenegem worked as an assistant at Ghent and obtained the (then) higher-education habilitation/aggregation in 1958.

Van Caenegem also played a long leadership role in the local historical society Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent: secretary-treasurer (1955–1986), vice-chair (1986–1990), and chair (1990–2007).

A central theme of his comparative work was explaining why English common law and continental civil law developed so differently, and how institutional and professional rivalries—between courts, legislators, and academic jurists—shaped legal evolution. Ghent University awarded him the Sarton Medal in 1994.

Internationally, he held visiting appointments and named lectureships, including the Arthur L. Goodhart Professorship at Cambridge (1984–1985), the Sir Henry Saville Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford (1989), and an Erasmus lectureship at Harvard (1991).

In 2014, the European Society for Comparative Legal History established a biennial Van Caenegem Prize for the best publication by a young legal historian. Carson was later ennobled with the personal title of baroness.

Works Selected books The Birth of the English Common Law, Cambridge University Press, 1973 (2nd ed. 1988). A Historical Introduction to Private Law, translated by D. E. L. Johnston, Cambridge University Press, 1992. A Historical Introduction to Western Constitutional Law, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Judges, Legislators and Professors. Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill. English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I. European Law in the Past and the Future. History of European Civil Procedure. Geschiedenis van het strafrecht in Vlaanderen. Geschiedenis van het strafprocesrecht in Vlaanderen. Les arrêts et jugés du Parlement de Paris sur appels flamands. Introduction aux sources de l’histoire médiévale.

Literature G.R. Elton, Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Studies, Cambridge University Press, 1991. Th. Denoël, Le nouveau dictionnaire des Belges, 1992. S. Dauchy, J. Monballyu, A. Wijffels (eds.), Auctoritates. Xenia R.C. Van Caenegem oblata (De auteurs van de rechtsontwikkeling), Brussels, Paleis der Academiën, 2000. Oscar Coomans de Brachène, État présent de la noblesse belge, Annuaire 2002; Annuaire 2004.