Selected Writings

Professor Charles Donahue, Jr.

Paul A. Freund Professor of Law


This page is very much “under development”. The idea is to make available as many of my writings both published and upublished as my time and my arrangements with various publishers allows. The rules are simple. Everything listed here is under copyright. You may download for private, non-commercial use; you may distribute it to your students for a fee no more than copying costs; you may not put it on the web (links are fine). If the item has been published, you may cite or quote it within the limits of “fair use”. If it has not been published, you may not cite or quote it without my express permission. Right now, there are relatively few items, mostly in pdf. Ultimately, I hope to get a great deal up in pdf. (Note: Because of bizarre way in which the HLS server interacts with larger pdf files, clicking on the pdf link will frequently bring you a zipped version of the file. You can then open it by using your WinZip program.)

Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: A Look at the English and “Franco-Belgian Regions” (Word) (this is the current version of an unpublished “book talk” about my Law, Marriage and Society).

‘The Western Canon Law of Marriage: A Doctrinal Introduction’, in Asifa Quraishi and Frank E. Vogel ed., The Islamic Marriage Contract: Case Studies in Islamic Family Law, Harvard Series in Islamic Law, 6 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 46-56 (PDF)

‘Private Law Without the State and During its Formation’, American Journal of Comparative Law, 56 (2008) 541–66 (PDF)

‘Bassianus, That Is to Say, Bazianus?—Bazianus and Johannes Bassianus on Marriage’, Rivista internazionale di diritto commune, 14 (2003) [published in 2005] 41–82 (PDF)

Ius in the Subjective Sense in Roman Law: Reflections on Villey and Tierney’, in Domenico Maffei, Italo Birocchi, Mario Caravale, Emanuele Conte, and Ugo Petronio, ed., A Ennio Cortese (Rome: Il Cigno Edizioni, 2001), 1:506-35 (PDF).

‘Malchus’s Ear: Reflections on Classical Canon Law as a Religious Legal System’, in Michael Hoeflich, ed., Lex et Romanitas: Essays for Alan Watson (Berkeley, CA: The Robbins Collection, 2000), 91–120 (PDF)

‘Proof by Witnesses in the Church Courts of Medieval England: An Imperfect Reception of the Learned Law’, in Morris S. Arnold, Thomas A. Green, Sally Scully, and Stephen White, ed., On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1981), 127–158 (PDF).

‘What Causes Fundamental Legal Ideas? Marital Property in England and France in the Thirteenth Century’, Michigan Law Review 78 (1979) 59–88 (PDF).

‘Comparative Family Law: Law and Social Change? [review article on Mary Ann Glendon, State, Law and Family]’, Michigan Law Review, 77 (1979) 350–62 (PDF).

‘The Case of the Man Who Fell Into the Tiber: The Roman Law of Marriage at the Time of the Glossators’, American Journal of Legal History, 22 (1978) 1–53 (PDF).

‘Comparative Reflections on the “New Matrimonial Jurisprudence” of the Roman Catholic Church’ , Michigan Law Review 75 (1977) 994–1020
(PDF).

‘Change in the American Law of Landlord and Tenant’, Modern Law Review 37 (1974) 242–63 (PDF).

‘Roman Canon Law in the Medieval English Church: Stubbs vs. Maitland Re-Examined after Seventy-Five Years in the Light of Some Records from the Church Courts’, Michigan Law Review, 72 (1974) 647–716 (PDF).

‘The Civil Law in England’ [review article on Brian Levack, The Civil Lawyers in England], Yale Law Journal, 84 (1974) 167–181 (PDF).

‘Some Thoughts on Michigan’s Copy of the Argentoratene Gratian’, Law Quadrangle Notes, 17 (Fall, 1972) 8–11 (PDF).

‘An Historical Argument for the Right to Counsel During Police Interrogation’, Yale Law Journal, 73 (1964) 1000–57 (PDF).