"A lavishly illustrated new hardback book, the culmination of more than three years' work by a team of leading legal historians and experts drawn from faculties across Europe and beyond. The book explores in a lively and accessible style the history of supreme courts structures throughout the European continent from the high medieval period to the modern day. The story is one of considerable diversity, but it also reveals many common themes which influenced the practice of law at the highest level in different times and places. To an extent which may surprise many readers, supreme courts in Europe, particularly in the pre-Napoleonic era, grappled with many of the problems of multifarious nationalities, languages, traditions and jurisdictions which are familiar challenges for lawyers working within the international supreme and supranational courts we know today. Indeed, the book serves to set the contemporary role of the international supreme courts within the context of a strikingly rich legacy of legal traditions, culture and history in Europe"--Unedited summary from book jacket.