The Consumption of Justice

"There is a practical reason I chose this book. I came to the study of the court in Malta because the records are so wonderful, but I am not trained as a western historian and legal records in the west are very different from those of the Ottoman Empire. So Dan Smail’s book was a tremendous help in figuring out the court system. In fact, Francesca Trivellato pointed out to me that there are few studies of actual court cases in pre-modern European history. Legal historians tend to operate in a zone separate from practice. Just reading his book was very helpful to me in trying to figure out what was going on in Malta with these court cases. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I also very much appreciate his approach which is the consumer’s view of the law. Again, history from the bottom up. He asks why people went to court and he comes up with a surprising answer. He says that it was not so much for the actual compensation, which they often didn’t get, but rather for the emotional satisfaction. Now, I don’t think that applies to my plaintiffs in Malta. I still don’t have the answers for why my Greek merchants bothered to do what they did in Malta, because they were so often unsuccessful, but I appreciate that he asked the question. They were trying to get compensation for goods that had been taken from them by raids conducted under the flag of Malta. At the centre of the book is a very simple desire, the desire on the part of merchants and sea captains to recover their goods. That is all they want and they will do what it takes to achieve it. So they go to the tribunal in Malta but, for various reasons, the tribunal is not motivated to see justice done. Nevertheless, they try and bend it to their will. Just as Dan Smail talks about why people come to court in Marseilles and why, even though they are unsuccessful, they continue to come. So that was a very inspirational book for me."