central and peripheral courts 1 These are just examples.The point is that a country’s central or peripheral geographical or political position is not an absolute standard for assessing its influence or conformity to general developments. In legal history, Switzerland, a centrally situated cluster of regional polities, resisted for centuries a strong impact of ius commune or Roman law on its legal particularisms; it was not until the nineteenth century that the legal developments of its larger French and German neighbours affected much more deeply Swiss law. In constitutional law, it may be argued that the so-called Restorations in Western and Central Europe after the defeat of Napoleon created constitutional systems (based on new written constitutions) which were, as regards constitutional monarchies and parliamentary systems, strongly inspired by the (unwritten) English constitution which many exiled statesmen had been acquainted with since the upheavals of the French Revolution. 32 he notionsof what is supposed or perceived to be “central” or “peripheral” are relative, and may therefore change in different cultural and historical contexts. They are also relative because of T different perspectives. Inmany ways, Sweden may be regarded – and perhaps may regard itself – a peripheral in comparison to “Europe” as a continent, or “Europe” as in the European Union, while it holds geographically (and to a large degree, also historically) a central position among Scandinavian countries. Our general geographical formatting tends to conceal how even territories which appear “central” in the conventional mapping of our (part of the) world may be peripheral in a different sense. Belgium, for example, a country which has traditionally been seen as a territory and polity situated in the centre of Western Europe, and which is now the seat of some major institutions of the European Union, has had a multi-secular peripheral history in the European context.1 Politically, it has been (and still is) of marginal importance because of its small size; while historically, under Spanish, Austrian, French and Dutch rule, Belgium was mostly regarded by its rulers as a peripheral (albeit at times strategically relevant) territory among their dominions. The Cold War finally reminded Europeans, whatever their Eurocentric and nationalist past, that they hadall become politically peripheral. Introduction
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