BÖHMER, JUST HENNING (Bohemerus Iustus Henningius). — Protestant jurist, born in Hannover to a family of Bohemian refugees on 27 August 1674, died in Halle on 29 August 1749. He obtained his doctorate in law at Jena. He taught law at Halle and served as a state councillor under Frederick William of Prussia.
His work is divided between civil and canon law. In the former field, he is counted among the adherents of the German pandectist method, and he also exercised considerable influence on the development of Prussian legislation. In addition to several dissertations on Roman law, later collected by his son under the title Exercitationes ad Pandectus (Hannover 1745–64), he wrote an important Introductio in ius digestorum.
His reputation as a canonist was no less, although his strong attachment to the Protestant movement must be borne in mind. In the systematization of canon law, he is credited with introducing for the first time the distinction between public and private law, in his Institutiones iuris canonici (Jena 1738). In addition to numerous specialized dissertations, he also wrote a substantial work in this field, in which he attempted to expound the ecclesiastical law of the Protestants while retaining in its presentation the order of subjects followed by the collection of the decretals: Ius ecclesiasticum protestantium usum modernum iuris canonici iuxta seriem iuris canonici ostendens (Halle 1714–17).
He edited and disseminated the works of others, such MARCIA (v.), De concordia sacerdotii et imperii seu de libertatibus ecclesiae gallicanae libri VIII, Leipzig 1708; the writings of Claudio Fleury; and those of others. These editorial labors, too, were shaped by his reformist tendency and by his position denying the primacy of the Roman Church.
He was also the author of one of the first critical editions of the Corpus iuris canonici (Halle 1747).