Andrew Riggsby provides a survey of the main areas of Roman law, and their place in Roman life.

Andrew Riggsby provides a survey of the main areas of Roman law, and their place in Roman life.

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.

Provides a comprehensive description of the system of Roman law, discussing slavery, property, contracts, delicts and succession. Also examines the ways in which Roman law influenced later legal systems such as the structure of European legal systems, tort law in the French civil code, differences between contract law in France and Germany, parameters of judicial reasoning, feudal law, and the interests of governments in making and communicating law.

Ancient Rome is the only society in the history of the western world whose legal profession evolved autonomously, distinct and separate from institutions of political and religious power. Roman legal thought has left behind an enduring legacy and exerted enormous influence on the shaping of modern legal frameworks and systems, but its own genesis and context pose their own explanatory problems. The economic analysis of Roman law has enormous untapped potential in this regard: by exploring the intersecting perspectives of legal history, economic history, and the economic analysis of law, the two volumes of Roman Law and Economics are able to offer a uniquely interdisciplinary examination of the origins of Roman legal institutions, their functions, and their evolution over a period of more than 1000 years, in response to changes in the underlying economic activities that those institutions regulated. Volume I explores these legal institutions and organizations in detail, from the constitution of the Roman Republic to the management of business in the Empire, while Volume II covers the concepts of exchange, ownership, and disputes, analysing the detailed workings of credit, property, and slavery, among others. Throughout each volume, contributions from specialists in legal and economic history, law, and legal theory are underpinned by rigorous analysis drawing on modern empirical and theoretical techniques and methodologies borrowed from economics. In demonstrating how these can be fruitfully applied to the study of ancient societies, with due deference to the historical context, Roman Law and Economics opens up a host of new avenues of research for scholars and students in each of these fields and in the social sciences more broadly, offering new ways in which different modes of enquiry can connect with and inform each other.

Comprehensive and accessible, this book offers a concise synthesis of the evolution of the law in Western Europe, from ancient Rome to the beginning of the twentieth century. It situates law in the wider framework of Europe’s political, economic, social and cultural developments.

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.