Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history. Among certain jurists and historians of legal process it has been seen as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts, some consider it a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth century historians have viewed legal history in a more contextualized manner more in line with the thinking of social historians. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society. Such legal historians have tended to analyze case histories from the parameters of social science inquiry, using statistical methods, analyzing class distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, number of settled cases they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that give us a more complex picture of law and society than the study of jurisprudence, case law and civil codes can achieve.

Ancient Mediterranean
Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000BC, had a civil code that was probably broken into twelve books. It was based on the concept of Ma'at, characterized by tradition, rhetorical speech, social equality and impartiality. Around 1760 BC under King Hammurabi, ancient Babylonian law was codified and put in stone for the public to see in the marketplace. This became known as the Codex Hammurabi. But like Egyptian law, which is pieced together by historians from records of litigation, few sources remain and much has been lost through time. The influence of these earlier laws on later civilizations was small. The Torah from the Old Testament is probably the oldest body of law still relevant for modern legal systems, dating back to 1280BC. It takes the form of moral imperatives, like the Ten Commandments and the Noahide Laws, as recommendations for a good society. Ancient Athens, the small Greek city-state, was the first society based on broad inclusion of the citizenry, excluding women and the slave class. Athens had no legal science, and Ancient Greek has no word for "law" as an abstract concept. Yet Ancient Greek law contained major constitutional innovations in the development of democracy.

Southern Asia
Ancient India and China represent distinct traditions of law, and had historically independent schools of legal theory and practice. The Arthashastra, dating from the 400BC, and the Manusmriti from 100AD were influential treatises in India, texts that were considered authoritative legal guidance. Manu's central philosophy was tolerance and pluralism, and was cited across South East Asia. But this Hindu tradition, along with Islamic law, was supplanted by the common law when India became part of the British Empire. Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Hong Kong also adopted the common law.

Eastern Asia
The eastern Asia legal tradition reflects a unique blend of secular and religious influences. Japan was the first country to begin modernizing its legal system along western lines, by importing bits of the French, but mostly the German Civil Code. This partly reflected Germany's status as a rising power in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, traditional Chinese law gave way to westernization towards the final years of the Ch'ing dynasty in the form of six private law codes based mainly on the Japanese model of German law. Today Taiwanese law retains the closest affinity to the codifications from that period, because of the split between Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, who fled there, and Mao Zedong's communists who won control of the mainland in 1949. The current legal infrastructure in the People's Republic of China was heavily influenced by soviet Socialist law, which essentially inflates administrative law at the expense of private law rights. Today, however, because of rapid industrialization China has been reforming, at least in terms of economic (if not social and political) rights. A new contract code in 1999 represented a turn away from administrative domination. Furthermore, after negotiations lasting fifteen years, in 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization.

Islamic law
A number of important legal institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islamic law and jurisprudence, known as the Islamic Golden Age, dated from the 7th to 13th centuries. One such institution was the Hawala, an early informal value transfer system, which is mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the 8th century. Hawala itself later influenced the development of the Aval in French civil law and the Avallo in Italian law. The "European commenda" limited partnerships (Islamic Qirad) used in civil law as well as the civil law conception of res judicata may also have origins in Islamic law.

Several fundamental common law instutitions may have been adapted from similar legal instututions in Islamic law and jurisprudence, and introduced to England after the Norman conquest of England by the Normans, who conquered and inherited the Islamic legal administration of the Emirate of Sicily, and also by Crusaders during the Crusades. In particular, the "royal English contract protected by the action of debt is identified with the Islamic Aqd, the English assize of novel disseisin is identified with the Islamic Istihqaq, and the English jury is identified with the Islamic Lafif." The English trust and agency institutions in common law were also most likely adapted from the Islamic Waqf and Hawala institutions respectively during the Crusades.

Other English legal institutions such as "the scholastic method, the license to teach," the "law schools known as Inns of Court in England and Madrasas in Islam" and the "European commenda" (Islamic Qirad) may have also originated from Islamic law. The methodology of legal precedent and reasoning by analogy (Qiyas) are also similar in both the Islamic and common law systems. These similarities and influences have led some scholars to suggest that Islamic law may have laid the foundations for "the common law as an integrated whole".

European laws

Roman Empire
Roman law was heavily influenced by Greek teachings. It forms the bridge to the modern legal world, over the centuries between the rise and decline of the Roman Empire. Roman law, in the days of the Roman republic and Empire, was heavily procedural and there was no professional legal class. Instead a lay person, iudex, was chosen to adjudicate. Precedents were not reported, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised. Each case was to be decided afresh from the laws of the state, which mirrors the (theoretical) unimportance of judges' decisions for future cases in civil law systems today. During the 6th century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Emperor Justinian codified and consolidated the laws that had existed in Rome so that what remained was one twentieth of the mass of legal texts from before. This became known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. As one legal historian wrote, "Justinian consciously looked back to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to restore it to the peak it had reached three centuries before.

Middle Ages
Roman law was lost through the Dark Ages, but in the eleventh century AD scholars in the University of Bologna rediscovered the texts and were the first to use them to interpret their own laws. Mediæval European legal scholars began researching the Roman and Islamic laws and they began using their concepts. After the Norman conquest of England which introduced Norman and Islamic legal concepts into mediæval England, the English King's powerful judges developed a body of precedent which became the common law. But also, a Europe wide lex mercatoria was formed, so that merchants could trade using familiar standards, rather than the many splintered types of local law. A precursor to modern commercial law, the lex mercatoria emphasised the freedom of contract and alienability of property.

Modern European law
The two main traditions of modern European law are the codified legal systems of most of continental Europe, and the English tradition based on case law.

As nationalism grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, lex mercatoria was incorporated into countries' local law under new civil codes. Of these, the French Napoleonic Code and the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch became the most influential. As opposed to English common law, which consists of massive tomes of case law, codes in small books are easy to export and for judges to apply. However, today there are signs that civil and common law are converging. European Union law is codified in treaties, but develops through the precedent laid down by the European Court of Justice.

United States
The United States legal system developed primarily out of the English common law system (with the exception of the state of Louisiana, which continued to follow the French civilian system after being admitted to statehood. Under the doctrine of federalism, each state has its own separate court system, and the ability to legislate within areas not reserved to the federal government.

Ann Arbor History
Ann Arbor was founded in January 1824 by John Allen and Elisha Rumsey, both of whom were land speculators. On May 25, 1824, the town plot was registered with Wayne County as "Annarbour"; this represents the earliest known use of the town's name.

There are various accounts concerning the origin of the settlement's name; one states that Allen and Rumsey decided to name it for their spouses, both named Ann, and for the stands of burr oak in the 640 acres (260 ha) of land they had purchased for $800 from the federal government. The regional Native Americans named the settlement Kaw-goosh-kaw-nick, after the sound of Allen's saw mill.

Ann Arbor became the seat of Washtenaw County in 1827, and was incorporated as a village in 1833. The Ann Arbor Land Company, a group of speculators, set aside 40 acres (16 ha) of undeveloped land and offered it to the State of Michigan as the site of the state capital, but lost the bid to Lansing. In 1837, the property was accepted instead as the site of the University of Michigan, forever linking Ann Arbor and its history with the university. The town became a regional transportation hub in 1839 with the arrival of the Michigan Central Railroad, and in 1851 Ann Arbor was chartered as a city.

During World War II, Ford Motor Company's nearby Willow Run plant turned out B-24 Liberator bombers. The population of Ann Arbor exploded with an influx of military personnel, war workers, and their families.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a reputation as an important center for liberal politics. Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy unveiled his Peace Corps proposal in 1960 at the University of Michigan, and President Lyndon B. Johnson first called for a "Great Society" as the university's commencement speaker in 1964. The city also became a locus for left-wing activism, and served as a hub for the civil-rights movement and anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as the student movement. The first major meetings of the national left-wing campus group Students for a Democratic Society took place in Ann Arbor in 1960; in 1965, the city was home to the first U.S. teach-in against the Vietnam War. During the ensuing fifteen years, many countercultural and New Left enterprises sprang up and developed strong constituencies within the city.

These influences washed into municipal politics during the early and mid-1970s when three members of the local, progressive Human Rights Party (HRP) won city-council seats on the strength of the student vote. During their time on the council, HRP representatives fought for measures including pioneering antidiscrimination ordinances, measures decriminalizing marijuana possession, and a rent-control ordinance; many of these remain in effect in modified form.

Alongside these liberal and left-wing efforts, a small group of conservative institutions were born in Ann Arbor. These include Word of God (established in 1967), a charismatic inter-denominational movement of national scope; and the Thomas More Law Center (established in 1999), a leading religious-conservative advocacy group.

The economy of Ann Arbor underwent a gradual shift from a manufacturing base to a service and technology base during the 20th century, which accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, the downtown transformed from one dominated by retail establishments dealing in staple goods to one composed mainly of eateries, cafés, bars, clubs, and specialty shops. Over the past several decades, Ann Arbor has increasingly found itself grappling with the effects of sharply rising land values and gentrification, as well as urban sprawl stretching far into the outlying countryside. On November 4, 2003, voters approved a greenbelt plan under which the city government would buy development rights to pieces of land adjacent to Ann Arbor to preserve them from sprawling development. Since then, a vociferous local debate has hinged on whether, and how, to accommodate and guide development within city limits.