Popular Legal Manuals as Sources and Mechanisms of Acquiring Legal Literacy

Abstract

This chapter argues on the basis of Italian, English, and American sources that we can include very different discursive forms and types of law manuals aimed at a wider public of non-jurists among the sources and mechanism of acquiring legal literacy. More precisely, most popularising written works might be considered a specific form of literature in the field of law, like the legal manuals for laymen. To this purpose, popular legal manuals which were published both in Continental Europe and in common law countries during the nineteenth century formed a very interesting kind of popular legal literature which shared similar features. One might talk of a “transnational” legal literary genre addressed to a non-professional, or a lay public of readers.