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.

中文翻译：

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两个国家的故事：英格兰和普鲁士的离婚，1670-1794

为什么乍一看似乎有很多共同点的两个主要欧洲国家（普鲁士和英国）在 18 世纪制定了截然不同的离婚立法？本文仔细研究了每个国家的改革、立法历史以及可能产生的影响，以试图梳理出它们背后的动机。通过将法律变化与国家的社会政治和知识结构联系起来，它继续解释了为什么改革如此不同。这篇文章的研究结果不仅与离婚法的历史相关，而且与更广泛的问题有关，即哪些力量在法律的演变中发挥了作用。今天，很少有人会怀疑法律发展存在社会和意识形态“原因”的命题。然而，