Cicero and Ulpian, Two Paragons of Legal Practice (original) (raw)
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The Roman jurists, 'calculating with concepts,' did not need any natural law." (Christoph Kletzer). Focusing on classical juristic material, this essay argues that natural law was in fact one concept, amongst others, that Roman jurists calculated with. There is no evidence for Roman juristic treatises dedicated to natural law, yet as Levy noted in 1949: "Hundreds of texts are concerned with ius naturale, naturalis ratio, rerum natura and other phrases related to natura or naturalis. It is impossible to find a common denominator." The essay divides into two parts: first, it surveys a series of arguments drawn from those hundreds of juristic texts that relate to natural reason and natural law(s). Second, it analyses the Roman juristic method of "calculating with concepts." The argument throughout is that the common denominator which eluded Levy is the Roman jurists own, highly particular, type of case-methodology.
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Investigation of what it is to have knowledge of Roman law is fraught with difficulties of an epistemological and historiographical nature. Accordingly, any attempt to provide an epistemological account of reasoning and method in Roman law will not be easy, if only because one cannot focus exclusively on the original Roman texts themselves. There is much more to Roman law than actual Roman law itself. Despite these difficulties, this contribution will attempt to provide an account of Roman legal method and reasoning, but it will do so taking some account of developments since the end of the ancient Roman world.
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"Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Iuridica", 2022
The aim of this piece is to present an overview of certain recent trends which have emerged in the study and teaching of Roman law. These trends are identified and placed within the larger context of the role and function of the teaching of Roman law in Law Schools during the twentieth century. In addition, it is argued in this piece that trends regarding the study of Roman legal sources which have emerged in the context of U.S. Law Schools have the potential to enrich the discipline and to permit new questions to be asked about Roman law.
Reflections on the Roman legal culture
Rome, just like other states of the ancient world, has stated its supremacy by warlike conquests, but also by perfecting its institutions and even by the use of diplomacy. Of all legal systems of the ancient worlds, that of Rome seems by far the most interesting and influential for the latter development of law. This character is due, primarily, to the practical spirit of the Romans and their tremendous capacity to assimilate and adapt cultural elements and institutions from other legal systems. We should also consider the giant leap that the Roman civilization has made, from the farthest antiquity, to the creation of institutions and concepts, principles that would survive the Roman Empire and decisively contribute to the construction of modern law. There are two characteristics that can best describe the specificity of the legal Roman culture: constructivism and conservatism. Keywords: legal history, Roman legal culture, characteristics
The chapter offers an historical overview of Roman law as an object of legal historical research. The forms of contemporary research on Roman law are more diverse than they have ever been. This is true regarding its varied national traditions, in each of which distinct historical and linguistic conditions have obtained. It is likewise true regarding the disciplinary location of research, and also at the level of method. In long historical perspective, this situation could not easily have been foreseen. From late medieval to early modern Europe, the prestige of Roman law had allowed it to serve as an important source of doctrine in analogical argument. Although much anachronism followed in consequence, this also meant that readers of Roman law brought a remarkable range of concerns to their practice. By the late 19th century, however, the historical study of Roman law had been reduced nearly everywhere to the narrowest form of doctrinal study. In many places, this resulted from foundations laid for the study of Roman legal science in Germany, a development whose politics resemble those obtaining elsewhere when positive law is advanced as the truest form of law. In the Anglophone world, significant pressure in this direction arose from a tradition of comparative study between the common law and civil law, which often demanded that the civil law be understood ex negativo in light of the common law's peculiar self-regard. And everywhere there was the fateful decision to locate the academic study of Roman law in law schools. Law school is where Roman law went to die. The recent efflorescence of Roman law owes its origins to a number of related factors. Many of these are shared with legal history writ large: the remarkable influence of feminism in one generation, or new institutional economics, have impelled research in Roman law, too. Some developments were accidental: the interest of historical sociologists like Fustel de Coulanges and Henry Sumner Maine generated conversations with visible echoes today. Similarly, the fact that Roman legal texts are among our oldest evidences of Latin made legal language a special focus of historical linguistics, and this in turn produced a school of legal scholarship that has employed linguistic tools to seek the ur-forms of Roman legal concepts. Some developments were endogenous to the study of antiquity: the on-going discovery of documentary texts from the ancient world yields every year new legal texts, with the result that varied evidence for law in action—including, significantly, law in action in colonial contexts—exists at the forefront of historical research. Finally, unsurprisingly, the major development has been a surge of interest in law among scholars located in Classics and History departments, participating in the currents in law & society and law & literature scholarship that have swept the academy over the last two generations. History is not destiny, of course. Significant areas of research are only now opening to view (or becoming active once again, with new and interesting tools). Because the remains of Roman law transmitted by textual traditions were overwhelmingly concerned with private law, public law has rarely received sophisticated attention. The publication of new evidence over the last century should make public law an area of vital growth in the future. The comparative study of Roman law, not least with rabbinic law, has long had a few sophisticated practitioners. The potential of the field is enormous, and hopefully the rise of interdisciplinary degree programs will foster growth in this area. Finally, Roman legal scholarship from antiquity to the twentieth century should itself be subjected to critical analysis, a process that has begun and will hopefully accelerate.