Metzger on Roman Law

Ernest Metzger, University of Glasgow School of Law, has posted Roman Law, which is forthcoming in Koten no Chosen, ed. Y. Kasai and V. Cazzato, (Tokyo: Chisen Shokan):

The Romans developed a sophisticated body of law over one thousand years. The law was consulted and used in medieval and modern Europe, and from Europe it was exported around the world. Many modern legal systems are based, or partly indebted to, Roman law. The Roman legal tradition endured, even as specific rules fell away. The success of the legal tradition is due to the quality of the legal materials that the Romans produced. Roman office holders were eager to extend new rights to the public, and a professional body of lawyers were skillful in developing those rights and bringing them to a high degree of precision. The Romans eventually produced a systematic framework for their law, and that framework is still reflected in many modern legal systems. The framework paired two diverse bodies of law, property and obligations, which together reflected a person’s economic affairs. The two bodies are unequal; far more rights are treated under obligations than property, and the law of obligations is, to a large extent, an accessory to the law of property. The central role of property in Roman private law indeed proved to be a hindrance in the modern era, when states sought to use Roman private law as a foundation for their own legal systems. 

--Dan Ernst

Spagnolo, Sampson and friends on Roman law

Coming out this fall with Hart Publishing is Principle and Pragmatism in Roman Law, co-edited by Benjamin Spagnolo (University of Cambridge) and Joe Sampson (University of Oxford). From the press:

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 debates and shed new light on this topic, and will be of interest to both scholars and students of Roman law.

The Table of Contents, which includes no female authors, appears after the jump:

1. Principle and Pragmatism
Benjamin Spagnolo and Joe Sampson

2. Modes of Roman Legal Reasoning in Context: A Brief Survey
Paul J. du Plessis

3. The Case of the Careless Purchaser, or 'Bonitary Ownership' and Ownership
Mike Macnair

4. Explaining D. 41.1.36
Joe Sampson

5. The Place of Rhetoric in Late Republican Law: Some Thoughts on Pietas and the Querela Inofficiosi Testamenti
Graeme Cunningham

6. Writing, Speaking, and the Roman Stipulatio
David Ibbetson

7. Principle and Practice in the Pacta Adiecta
Boudewijn Sirks

8. Plato, Principle, and Pragmatism: Market Regulation in D. 50.11.2
Constantin Willems

9. Limits of Juristic Argument in the Exercitorian Edict
Peter Candy

10. Insulam Exurere: Reading Collatio 12.7.1–3 Closely
Wolfgang Ernst

11. Quasi and (Cor)ruptio
Benjamin Spagnolo

Further information is available here.

--Mitra Sharafi