An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval Northern France. It is centred around a time and a place in which European law underwent major transformations, from a plethora of local oral systems to a fairly coherent systems of national written customary law. In this process, law and legal procedures came to reflect a variety of cultural traditions, ranging from popular perceptions of animals and the human body to learned ideas of Roman jurisprudence. Drawing on a range of sources, including judical, legal, literary and historical, Cohen analyzes the various influences on the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.