William Magnuson - The Just and the Good: How Law Made the Western World

The Just and the Good by Texas A&M Law School professor William Magnuson examines ten foundational laws and legal institutions that transformed the course of Western history and continue to undergird our modern world, from the courts of ancient Athens and the legal codes of Rome to the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, and the civil rights movement. Read on for a Q&A with the author to learn more.

How did you choose the ten laws that are the focus of this book?

This was the most fun part of researching the book. It’s a book on the history of law in Western civilization, after all, and so it’s an ambitious project. I wanted to do justice to the grandness of it. I had some initial ideas about what laws had to be included—the courts of Ancient Athens, the code of Ancient Rome, the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, for example, all had to be in there—but there was also some wiggle room. In the end, I had to make some difficult decisions, but I think I’ve captured something essential in the ones I’ve chosen.

How is law fundamentally democratizing?

I love this question because it is really the fundamental revelation of the book. As I started digging into the individual laws, I realized that there was a common thread to all of them. Law is inherently democratizing because of the way that it works. It has to be written down. It has to be objective. It has to be accessible to all. Those traits have a way of breaking down barriers and equalizing societies.

What do you hope readers will get out of reading this book?

Two things. First, I hope readers will enjoy the stories. The book is fundamentally a tale of Western civilization and its turning points. These were thrilling, but also scary, times, and I hope readers will come away with a sense of just how important lawmaking has been in crafting our world. But second, I hope that some of the wisdom of our ancestors will rub off on readers. It’s inspiring to read the thoughts of history’s greatest lawgivers and see that they too had doubts, that they too struggled with division and conflict, and yet that they forged on anyway. Law requires us to believe in the power of ideas. That’s an important message.