What Is It to Have Knowledge of Roman Legal Methods and Reasoning? (original) (raw)
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Emory Law School, 2018
Course description: In the thousand years between the Law of the Twelve Tables (451 BCE) and Justinian's massive Corpus Iuris Civilis (530 CE), the Romans developed the most sophisticated and comprehensive secular legal system of antiquity. Roman law is still at the heart of the civil law tradition of the European Continent and some of its former colonies in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, and it was instrumental in the development of international law, the church's canon law, and the common law tradition. The Roman lawyers created new legal concepts, ideas, rules and mechanisms that are still applied in the most Western legal systems. Specifically designed for American law students without a civil law or canon law background, this course introduces the Roman legal system in its social, political, and economic context. The course will cover the fundamental topics of private law (persons, property and inheritance, and obligations); the revival of Roman law in the Middle Ages; and the current impact of Roman law in the era of globalization. No knowledge of Roman history or of Latin is required, and all materials will be in English translation. Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of the course on Roman law students will be able to: (i) demonstrate basic understanding of the foundations of Roman law from a comparative perspective; (ii) analyze and critically evaluate Roman legal concepts and rules covered in the course; (iii) present arguments based on Roman law sources in a well-structured manner (iv) exhibit a working knowledge of Property law, the law of succession, and the law of obligations (contracts and delicts); and (v) analyze the techniques of the Roman law of litigation. Final Examination: 1. The final examination for the course on Roman law will consist of an original research papers (i.e. expanded essay) or a written answer to any of the hypos we will discuss during the course. The title of the paper or the selection of the hypo must be approved by the instructor in advance. 2. The paper requires the writer to analyze a perspective or to argue a point. The paper should be about 4,000 words long. It should contain: an abstract, a main text, and some concluding reflections. The style should be similar to that of an op-ed for the New York Times. The answer to one of the hypos should be about 2,000 words long and should contain quotations related to the Corpus iuris or Roman legal sources.
The Relevance of Roman Law: A Look at its Roles and Ideologies
The paper examines legal historians’ discourses concerning the interpretation of Roman legal sources. It does so by analysing two examples of scholarly debates: one on the use of Roman law as an atemporal legal doctrine, and one in which Roman law appears as a historical manifestation of natural law. The focus is on the different uses of the concept of ‘ideology’ and the possible roles of Roman law in legal education. It is argued that the concept of identity can meaningfully contribute to our understanding of these debates as well as to the study of Roman law in general.
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
Thinking like a lawyer: the case for Roman law
"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.
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.
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF ROMAN LAW AND SOCIETY
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society surveys the landscape of contemporary research and charts principal directions of future inquiry. More than a history of doctrine or an account of jurisprudence, the Handbook brings to bear upon Roman legal study the full range of intellectual resources of contemporary legal history, from comparison to popular constitutionalism, from international private law to law and society, thereby setting itself apart from other volumes as a unique contribution to scholarship on its subject. The Handbook brings the study of Roman law into closer alignment and dialogue with historical, sociological, and anthropological research into law in other periods. It will therefore be of value not only to ancient historians and legal historians already focused on the ancient world, but to historians of all periods interested in law and its complex and multifaceted relationship to society.
Law and Legalism in the Roman Republic
This paper (with its attached handout) was delivered in 2005 as my Inaugural Lecture as Collegiate Professor of Classics and Roman Law at the University of Michigan. Its central subject is "legalism" (an attachment to the view that proper legal conduct involves no more than scrupulous adherence to promulgated rules) as it pertains to Livy's account of Roman conduct after the Samnite ambush at the Caudine Forks (321: Livy 9.1-19), and then a broader consideration of how such legalism fits into the emergence of Roman jurisprudence in the later Roman Republic.