Legal history is about changes within the law. The transition from unlaw to rule of law is such a change; another is the shift in focus from national to European law introduced in the post-WWII era with help of the European council and the European Convention of Human Rights, along with the effects on national legal cultures in Europe through transnational courts in Strasbourg and Luxemburg. The Norwegian legal historian Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde discusses the concept of legal change in his recent book on the Norwegian Supreme Court 1965–2015.21 Within those 50 years the justices still worked within the same building from 1903. But not only the political and social context had changed, also all the justices on the bench were replaced. The institution’s legal culture had also transformed. Women justices had successively been an increasing part of the judiciary. The position of the national supreme court had also changed in relation to the transnational courts and also the method to identify the changes has changed. The internationalization of the law during this period had been dramatic. And the legal sources were not any longer identified only as printed material but also included oral history in the form of interviews and YouTube conversations. Jørn Sundes book on the modern history of the Norwegian Supreme Court is just one example that demonstrate this transition. If a history of the court had been written by a predecessor in the postwar generation, the perspectives had been quite different. The concepts of identity and culture hadn’t stamped the exposition. The narrative would certainly have been dominated more by changes within organization and administration, rather than transitions based on ideology, culture and identity. The discourses regarding the legal profession and the judiciary today are more embedded in the new discipline of “history of knowledge” (Wissensgeschichte). This discipline focuses on how knowledge is distributed with the help of networks, conferences, and discourses. The concept of “history of knowledge” is very fruitful also for legal historical research.22 128 renaissance for legal history 21 Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, Høgsteretts historie 1965–2015, Bergen 2015. The concept of legal cultures as an instrument to do legal historical research
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