Miller, William Ian. Avoiding Legal Judgment

• Author: Miller, William Ian
• Title: Avoiding Legal Judgment: The Submission of Disputes to Arbitration in Medieval Iceland
• Published in: The American Journal of Legal History 28.2
• Year: 1984
• Pages: 95-134
• E-text: jstor.org
• Reference: Miller, William Ian. "Avoiding Legal Judgment: The Submission of Disputes to Arbitration in Medieval Iceland." The American Journal of Legal History 28.2 (1984): 95-134.

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Annotation

Examining three case-histories about murder disputes in the medieval kin-based Icelandic society, the author focuses on arbitrated settlements ("sætt", agreement), showing that this mechanism was often preferred to legal judgments, as most of them didn’t lead to clear outcomes and consequences. The author points out the importance of the pacemaker figures in pressing the parties to a reconciliation, obtaining for the litigants (and often for the arbitrators) short term advantages, such as reinforcing friendships and alliances or just a compensation payment, as shown by the analysis of the three cases and the complex decision-making process. The author’s opinion is that the arbitrated settlements, even if they didn't led to stable peace, were an affirmation of the peacemaking ideology of Icelandic society.

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References

Chapter 40: „ Njáll bauð honum þegar sættina : “The negotiations between Njal and Gunnar are not complicated. As Njal notes, the two have already agreed to maintain their good relations, agreeing to agree, so to speak; they have a history of settling quickly for the deaths of their servants, and of using the same procedure to arrive at the settlement.” (p. 116)

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• Written by: Claudia Held
• Icelandic/English translation: