Medieval Church Law And The Origins Of The Western Legal Tradition A Tribute To Kenneth Pennington May 2026

This tribute honors Pennington’s central thesis: that the ius commune —the common law of Europe—was not Roman alone, but a dynamic fusion of Roman jurisprudence and canonistic equity. In Pennington’s hands, the medieval canonists (Gratian, Huguccio, Innocent IV, and a host of lesser-known masters) emerge as the true architects of concepts we now take for granted: due process, the presumption of innocence, the right against self-incrimination, and the limits of sovereign power. Long before Magna Carta became a secular icon, canon lawyers were arguing that a pope—let alone a king—could be bound by law.

Pennington’s work shines most brightly in his recovery of procedural revolution. His magisterial studies on the ordo iudiciarius show how the Church, needing to adjudicate marriage, benefice, and heresy without recourse to ordeals or bloodshed, invented a rational system of written proofs, representation, and appeal. The adversarial trial, the role of the judge as arbiter rather than inquisitor (in principle, if not always practice), and the very idea of a legal "right" as something possessed by the lowly against the mighty—these were canonistic gifts to the West. This tribute honors Pennington’s central thesis: that the

A Tribute to Kenneth Pennington