One of the great and lasting influences on the course of Western culture, Roman law occupies a unique place in the history of the civilized world. Originally the law of a small rural community, then of a powerful city-state, it became the law of an empire which embraced almost all of the known civilized world. The influence of Roman law extends into modern times and is reflected in the great codifications of private law that have come into existence in Europe, America, and Asia. Even now, Roman law in modified form is the law of the land in Scotland, and the civil code of Louisiana is directly based on Roman law. Forming an important part in the historical and intellectual background of understanding and a basis for further development of the principles of international jurisprudence. In this book an international authority on Roman legal history sets forth in clear, understandable English the institutions of Roman law and traces their development through the Byzantine Empire into medieval and modern Europe. It is an indispensable study for every American lawyer and for anyone interesting in legal and political history.
Roman law is one of the key legal systems from which modern European law is derived. In this book Dr Tellegen-Couperus discusses the way in which Roman jurists created and developed law, and the way in which Roman law has come down to us.The most important creation of the Romans was their law. In this book, Dr Tellegen-Couperus discusses the way in which the Roman jurists created and developed law and the way in which Roman law has come down to us. Special attention is given to questions such as 'who were the jurists and their law schools' and to the close connection between jurists and the politics of their time.
This is a short and succinct summary of the unique position of Roman law in European culture by one of the world's leading legal historians. Peter Stein's masterly study assesses the impact of Roman law in the ancient world, and its continued unifying influence throughout medieval and modern Europe. Roman Law in European History is unparalleled in lucidity and authority, and should prove of enormous utility for teachers and students (at all levels) of legal history, comparative law and European Studies. Award-winning on its appearance in German translation, this English rendition of a magisterial work of interpretive synthesis is an invaluable contribution to the understanding of perhaps the most important European legal tradition of all.
The law developed by the ancient Romans remains a powerful legal and political instrument today. In The Roman Law Tradition a general editorial introduction complements a series of more detailed essays by an international team of distinguished legal scholars exploring the various ways in which Roman law has affected and continues to affect patterns of legal decision-making throughout the world.
This edited collection presents an interesting and original series of essays on the roles of principle and pragmatism in Roman private law. The book traverses key areas of Roman law to examine the explanatory power of - and delineate interactions between - abstract, doctrinal principle, and pragmatic, real-world problem-solving. Essays canvassing sources of law, property, succession, contracts and delicts sketch the varied roles of theoretical narratives - whether internal to Roman doctrine or derived from external influence - and of practical, policy-based solutions in the jurists' thought. Principled reasoning in Roman juristic argument ranges from safeguarding commerce, to the priority of acts or intentions in property transactions, to notions of pietas, to Platonic conceptions of the market. Pragmatism is discernible in myriad ways, from divergence between form and substance, to extension of legal rules for economic, social or political utility, to emphasis on what parties did rather than what they said. The distinctive contribution of the book is its survey of different manifestations of principle and pragmatism across Roman private law. The essays - by eminent as well as emerging academics - will stimulate debate about the roles principle and pragmatism play in juristic argument, and will be of interest to both scholars and students of Roman law.
There are no legal institutions other than pignus and hypotheca (i.e. mortgage) where the formative effect of legal practice can be so clearly observed. Security and Credit in Roman Law outlines the legal history of these institutions in terms of an iterative relationship between transactional lawyers drafting legal transactions and Roman jurisprudence deploying its analytical skills in order to accommodate new transactional practices into the Roman legal system. The evolution of the Roman law of real security, well known through the legal sources (Justinian's Digest and Code), is reconstructed, while matching it with actual banking practices, in particular the secured lending transactions documented in the archive of the Sulpicii. In the late classical period the imperial chancery increasingly interfered with it in order to provide a considerable degree of protection to debtors. The (largely but certainly not completely) spontaneous evolution of Roman law produced a law of secured transactions which was highly sophisticated and versatile, allowing non-possessory security, multiple charges, pledges of receivables, antichretic pledges, and even floating charges over a dynamic fund of assets. Since legal systems often adapt in reaction to impulses from their economic environment, the complexity of the Roman law of real security indicates that pignus and hypotheca did play a significant role in the Roman economy. It will be shown that this role was generally a positive one. Its main weaknesses were lack of publicity and the presence of fiscal charges: even these weaknesses did not undermine the effectiveness of secured transactions.
The legal situation of the women of ancient Rome was extremely complex, and - since there was no sharp distinction between free woman, freedwoman and slave - the definition of their legal position is often heard. Basing her lively analysis on detailed study of literary and epigraphic material, Jane F. Gardner explores the provisions of the Roman laws as they related to women. Dr Gardner describes the ways in which the laws affected women throughout their lives - in families, as daughters, wives and parents; as heiresses and testators; as owners and controllers of property; and as workers. She looks with particular attention at the ways in which the strict letter of the law came to be modified, softened, circumvented, and even changed, pointing out that the laws themselves tell us as much about the economic situation of women and the range of opportunities available to them outside the home.