History Professor to Lecture on Making of Environmental Law
Tim Sistrunk, Chico State Department of History professor, will give a free public address entitled, “The Natural World of Bartolus of Sassoferrato and the Making of Western Environmental Law,” April 4, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Rowland-Taylor Recital Hall (PAC 134).
“This presentation will give an overview of the environmental ideas of one of the most famous jurists of the European Middle Ages, Bartolus of Sassoferrato,” said Sistrunk. “His legal determinations about the qualities of the natural world are both familiar to our own age as we have inherited his legacy, and they are unexpected as well, as he explored ideas that we have since lost.”
Prompted by new inventions like the windmill, the escapement clock, accurate nautical charts and mapping, Bartolus of Sassoferrato wondered about the legal nature of the wind, of changing rivers and the high seas, of natural law and time, and how to understand the falcon in flight.
“All of his ideas had complex effects as they were realized in different ways in law codes and in legal disputes across the West for centuries,” noted Sistrunk. “We are still living in natural spaces with intellectual dimensions that he helped to design.”
For more information, contact Sistrunk at 898-4202.