Arbitration and Law in Renaissance Florence

Abstract

Arbitration and other extrajudicial forms of dispute settlement are beginning to receive serious consideration in historical studies relegated to an intermediate position in the presumed progressi violent self-help to the sophisticated machinery of a state-run judi tem, arbitration seemed to hold little historical interest. It lacked procedures and conceptual sophistication. Its contribution to le tory, therefore, was minimal, so arbitration received only brief treat histories of civil procedure.1 Political and social history also ne arbitration, which was seen as contributing little to the formation o tive government and social order. Arbitration, it was assumed, flou only where and when government was too weak to provide truly e order.2