Celtic Law - Celtic Laws in Late Prehistory

Celtic Laws in Late Prehistory

The various legal systems that have been called Celtic originated in prehistory, with little actual data available as to what they actually contained at this early stage. While occasional references to ‘common Celtic law’ in academic literature, such as Fergus Kelly's Guide to Early Irish Law, seem to imply that there was one original Celtic law from which the various later Celtic laws, some of which are historically attested (see Brehon Laws; Welsh law), evolved, it is unlikely that anything like ‘original Celtic law’ (or ‘common Celtic law’) ever existed as a unified, let alone a codified body of law. Rather, it is currently thought that various central and western European societies in later prehistory, commonly lumped together under the name ‘Celts’, had individually different customary laws, which evolved out of similar social needs, influenced each other considerably over several centuries or even millennia, and thus ended up reasonably similar to each other.

‘Original (or Common) Celtic law’ thus can only be reconstructed, and only as a generalisation. Such a generalisation does not reflect actual past legal practice, but can only show which general principles are likely to have been typical for many (but not necessarily all) early Celtic laws.