Long a major element of classical studies, the examination of the laws of the ancient Romans has gained momentum in recent years as interdisciplinary work in legal studies has spread. Two resulting issues have arisen, on one hand concerning Roman laws as intellectual achievements and historical artifacts, and on the other about how we should consequently conceptualize Roman law. Drawn from a conference convened by the volume's editor at the American Academy in Rome addressing these concerns and others, this volume investigates in detail the Roman law of obligations—a subset of private law—together with its subordinate fields, contracts and delicts (torts). A centuries-old and highly influential discipline, Roman law has traditionally been studied in the context of law schools, rather than humanities faculties. This book opens a window on that world. Roman law, despite intense interest in the United States and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, remains largely a continental European enterprise in terms of scholarly publications and access to such publications. This volume offers a collection of specialist essays by leading scholars Nikolaus Benke, Cosimo Cascione, Maria Floriana Cursi, Paul du Plessis, Roberto Fiori, Dennis Kehoe, Carla Masi Doria, Ernest Metzger, Federico Procchi, J. Michael Rainer, Salvo Randazzo, and Bernard Stolte, many of whom have not published before in English, as well as opening and concluding chapters by editor Thomas A. J. McGinn.

This volume contains Birks' notes on a series of lectures on the Roman law of obligations delivered in 1982. They give a comprehensive insight into his views on the topic, which are relevant in both a Roman context and also from a modern English perspective. The book examines, in turn, the law of contracts with its general principles and rule applications to the transactions mentioned in the Institutes; the law of delicts; and finally the miscellany of residual obligations from which the later categories of quasi-contracts and quasi-delicts, but also the modern law of unjust enrichment, emerged.

This book is widely regarded as one of the most remarkable achievements in Roman Law and Comparative Law scholarship this century - a fact attested to by the universal acclaim with which it has been received throughout Europe, America, and beyond. As a work of Roman Law scholarship it fusesthe vast volume of 20th century scholarship on the Roman law of obligations into a clear and very readable (and in many ways original) account of the law. As a work of comparative law it traces the transformation of the Roman law of obligations over the centuries into what is now modern German,English and South African law, presenting the reader with a contrast between these legal systems which is unique both in its scope and its depth. As a whole the book is written with a deep understanding of human nature and of many social, economic, and other forces that determine the face of thelaw.

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.