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Why did two leading European countries (Prussia and England), which at first sight appeared to have much in common, enact radically different divorce legislation during the eighteenth century? This Article takes a close look at each country’s reforms, their legislative history, and their likely effects in an effort to tease out what motives lay behind them. And by connecting the legal changes to the countries’ sociopolitical and intellectual structures, it goes on to explain why the reforms were so different. The Article’s findings are relevant not only for the history of the law of divorce, but also for the broader issue of what forces play a role in the evolution of the law. Today, few would doubt the proposition that there are social and ideological “causes” of legal development. However, what these causes are and in what combination they have to be present for a legal change to occur are questions that are rarely examined in any detail.
