Legal history is the study of how and why the law has changed over time. It operates within social history as legal development is closely tied to the advancement of civilizations. Some view legal history as documenting how laws have developed and evolved to better understand the origins of legal concepts, while others see it as a subset of intellectual history.

1. The study of how and why the law has changed is known as legal history or the history of law. The
advancement of civilizations is closely related to the development of legal history, which operates within
the broader framework of social history. Legal history, according to some jurists and legal process
historians, is the documentation of the development of laws and the technical explanation of how these
laws have changed in order to better understand the antecedents of various legal concepts. Some
people regard legal history as a subset of intellectual history.