How intersectionality helps to tell the history of legal pluralism

Impressions from the conceptual forum on ‘Intersectionality’ on 28 October 2025

What happens when historians who study different eras come together with legal historians and legal scholars to discuss intersectionality? The conceptual forum at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Legal Unity and Pluralism’ at the end of October 2025 showed that looking at the overlaps between social categories such as gender, origin and religion not only alters current debates, but also shifts the perspective regarding whose history is being told and how. The conceptual forum debated the methodological approach of intersectionality not so much in terms of its general significance, but more in terms of how it can open up new insights into the historical dynamics of the relationship between legal unity and pluralism. This was the fifth time that the conceptual forum, a series of events established by the Kolleg, had taken place.

Organiser Matthias Bähr (Düsseldorf) made it clear at the very start what the day would be about: not a fundamental debate on intersectionality, but the question of how intersectional analyses can provide new insights into legal systems of the past. Specifically, scholars could explore who has the ‘power of classification’ to categorise others, what (un)intended side effects laws have, and when law deliberately highlights or even ignores social categories of difference. Finally, Bähr also reminded the audience that intersectional analyses can protect the researcher against succumbing to essentialist or even ahistorical arguments. Instead, such analyses can help outline the power dynamics of past societies in a better and more accurate way.

Bähr’s example illustrated the day’s agenda. Attending Anglican church services in confessionally mixed Ireland around 1600 was not a matter of choice for men and women; it was a legal obligation for all residents. Churchgoing thus also became political proof of loyalty to the English crown. However, since early modern gender concepts did not see women as having an independent political role, their failure to attend church was only very rarely punished by law. The legally required and enforced male participation in the Anglican rite was thus counterbalanced by a clandestine but in practice significantly more individualised female Catholic culture of confession. Bähr showed that other categories of difference were added to this intersection of confession and gender in the practice of persecution: the legal obligation to attend church services was controlled and monitored only in relation to older, wealthy and prestigious male heads of households belonging to the political elite, who faced heavy fines if they failed to attend. Women, on the other hand, were able to practise a wider range of Catholic rituals, as they were simply not deemed to be of political significance. Overall, this allowed the development of a confessional ‘subculture’ supported by broad sections of the population, since they did not belong to the intersection considered politically relevant. Thus, a confessional life emerged alongside the religious practice determined by legal norms, a life that was only made possible by this intertwining of gender, confession and social status.

Multilayered discrimination? A common thread running through many eras

Current fellows, members and alumni of the Kolleg discussed with guests how intersectional analyses can be used to examine the historical dynamics of the relationship between legal unity and pluralism. The speakers provided examples from their own research in various historical and geographical contexts. The first panel was opened by Kristin Skottki (Bayreuth), who argued that intersectional analyses are still relatively rare in medieval studies – unjustifiably so, as her example showed. In the print media reporting of the pogrom in Sternberg, Mecklenburg, in 1492, Jews were not only religiously marginalised but also constructed as a hereditarily hostile group based on their ancestral ‘race’ (ger. ‘Geschlecht’). Several categories – religion and an early discourse of racialisation – intertwined here. Using the example of a discourse widespread in American evangelicalism, Felix Krämer (Erfurt) showed that intersectionality should examine not only specific experiences of discrimination. Since the 1970s, some in this milieu have been staging a supposed ‘crisis of white heterosexual masculinity’, this media campaign being linked to legal and social claims to power. Intersectional research can also help to reveal and explain privileges and their political-discursive defence strategies. In her paper, Ines Rössl (Vienna) called for intersectional research to be used more widely in legal studies, arguing that intersectional analyses should not be limited to anti-discrimination law, but can be used generally to lay bare the interrelations between legal norms and social categories.

In the second panel, Benjamin Seebröker (Münster) presented his research on the judgments of the Central Criminal Court in London. The court records showed that the high number of Irish men convicted of property offences around 1800 was mainly due to a combination of factors, including increased poverty, insufficient language skills, and a lack of knowledge of normativity (ger. Normativitätswissen). Aleksandra Oniszczuk (Warsaw/Münster) used the example of the Duchy of Warsaw to show how new categories replaced older ones. Religious freedom was formally recognised in the Napoleonic satellite state, meaning that legal discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation was prohibited. However, despite being granted legal equality, Jews were still prohibited from settling in certain urban areas if they were not considered ‘civilised’ or wealthy enough. Thus, new legal norms merely shifted the grounds for continuing inequality. Beate Althammer (Berlin/Trier) drew attention to the legal and social status of Polish migrant workers in the Prussian territories around 1900. Although they were worse off than Prussian agricultural workers in terms of labour and residence rights, in the specific case of a wage dispute that she examined, a group of Polish migrant workers successfully used their personal networks to sue for their outstanding wages in court. Althammer also stressed the importance of administrative regulations and court practices, which ultimately contributed to equal treatment in court. Intersectionality therefore means not only analysing the intertwining of inequalities but also highlighting the room for manoeuvre that people develop despite the disadvantages and discrimination that they face.

In her commentary, Ulrike Ludwig (Münster) showed how this approach can bear fruit in practice. She opened up four key perspectives. First, it is necessary to analyse which individual categories of social difference are linked to legal norms, and how they are renewed in actual instances of legal decision-making. Second, it is necessary to explore which social categories of difference are already inscribed in legal matters. In premodern inheritance law, for example, gender, as well as honest and legitimate birth status, were powerful categories of social and legal differentiation. Third, it is necessary to examine where categories of difference and their intersectional interconnections gain relevance in legal and judicial practice. In doing so, it is necessary to establish where social categories of differentiation play a role and what effects they have, from practices of criminal complaint and prosecution to procedural law, glosses and commentaries on legal norms, to the concretisation of law and the practice of clemency. Fourth and finally, it is necessary to examine how actors reflect on and discuss contemporary categories of difference in law, for example in sentencing. The value of such investigations is clear: intersectionality forces researchers to consider social inequality not in isolation, but in its interconnections.

Open questions and a clear conclusion

The concluding discussion focused on three points, these having already been touched upon throughout the day. First, there was a debate about how research should deal with the activist facet of the concept. Ultimately, the aim of intersectional analysis is always to highlight and dismantle structural discrimination and privileges that result from the intersection of several categories of difference, and thereby to make the world a better place. Historians could implement this activist approach by reflecting historiographically on past and present notions of justice and utopias, and by committing themselves to (re)constructions of the past that are as close to reality as possible. The day was also accompanied by the methodological question of whether intersectionality itself is already a method or should rather be understood as an umbrella term that brings together various approaches. This showed that a critical discussion of methodology is indispensable, as methodology always influences findings. Finally, the issue of sources was also discussed: namely, the fact that historical documents hardly ever record social categories of difference systematically, let alone serially. Overall, the fifth conceptual forum showed how much intersectionality can enrich various branches of research at the Kolleg. It can be a powerful tool for anyone who wants to understand how law shapes social differences – and how, in turn, these shape the law in various ways.

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Cite as:
Müller, Simon, How intersectionality helps to tell the history of legal pluralism, EViR Blog, 20.01.2026, https://www.evir.uni-muenster.blog/en/conceptual-forum-intersectionality/.

Lizenz:
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