scholarly journals BIBLICAL LAW IN GRECO-ROMAN ATTIRE: THE CASE OF LEVIRATE MARRIAGE IN LATE ANTIQUE CHRISTIAN LEGAL TRADITIONS

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-164
Author(s):  
Yifat Monnickendam

AbstractWhat happened to biblical law when transferred into late antique Christianity? How can answering this question provide a paradigm that helps us understand the rise and development of late antique Christian legal traditions? In the first centuries of the Common Era, the Christian legal tradition began to evolve in Roman, Greek, rabbinic, and biblical contexts. Focusing on the biblical institution of levirate marriage, this article offers a paradigm that elucidates how Christians might have adopted, adapted, and sometimes rejected their legal heritage; it may illuminate the overall development of Christian legal discourse. Following a short survey of the rabbinic adaptation of biblical levirate marriage and the Roman and Christian rulings regarding this practice, I analyze the Christian exegetical and theological discourse on levirate marriage, focusing on the acceptance or rejection of levirate marriage as a whole and adaptations to the biblical institution. This analysis demonstrates the disparity between the rabbinic discourse, the Christian and Roman rulings, and the theological and exegetical discourse. It shows how Christians remodeled their biblical heritage according to Greek and Roman legal concepts, namely the Roman adoption and the Greek epiklerate, and treated it as part of inheritance law and child-parent relationships, whereas the rabbis used different adaptations and treated it as part of matrimonial law and sexual relationships. This discussion therefore recontextualizes the legal discourse, positioning the Christian approach to levirate marriage as a complex case of legal transplant and adaptation of a legal heritage.

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 987-1006
Author(s):  
Ivan Milotić

The boundary dispute between Lovran and Mošćenice of 1646 quite recently received some attention in the literature and was simultaneously adequately elaborated form palaeographic and philological point of view. Despite the fact that it is substantially a legal act, its legal content did not receive adequate attention of the scholars, which may primarily be said with reference to its institutes, terms and expressions whose precision, accuracy and legal technical at first sight most evidently depart from the local feudal legal customs and legal traditions. Moreover, nevertheless that these terms and expressions were written down in Italian language of the time, they evidently represent Italianized version of terms, expression and legal concepts that originally belong to Latin language. Additionally, their mentions in the document at hand have no resemblance to the usual medieval descriptions of the legal phenomena which have a little in common with normative language or to administrativefunctional style of that time which distinctively shaped the legal documents. Because all these indications suggest that the key terms, expressions and institutes pertinent to the boundary dispute between Lovran and Mošćenice (and its resolution) might be borrowed from the Roman legal tradition (which outreached this territory by means of ius commune) and the Romano-canonical process, this paper examines origin, roles and functions which were achieved in practice by their use in this particular legal matter. The paper will specifically explore the procedural mechanism which was employed to reach settlement of the boundary dispute between Lovran and Mošćenice and will additionally provide a deeper insight into the possibility that in this particular case arbitration conceptually based on the Roman law was employed as the means of dispute resolution.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 136-165
Author(s):  
Ja. Turłukowski

This paper analyses regulations concerning ordinary forms of testament in Russian and Chinese legislation against the background of selected solutions specific for particular European legal systems. It begins with a brief analysis of the development of Chinese and Russian civil law. This is intended to show the differences, but also the similarities, between them, caused, among other things, by the influence of Soviet law as well as ongoing reforms of succession law in both countries. Such similarities justify the need for a comparative examination of these legal orders, while the European context makes it possible to highlight their specific features. Taking into account the aim of this study, particular attention is paid to the normative sources of inheritance law and the traditional division of testaments into ordinary and special wills, something which is a common feature of Russian law, Chinese law and European legal traditions. The paper then examines particular forms of wills commonly found in European legislation, and follows this with a discussion of whether such solutions exist in Chinese and Russian law. Forms of holographic and notarial wills are presented in this manner. Particular attention is paid to forms of wills that occur only in one legal order, e.g. printed testaments as well as video and audio testaments in Chinese law, as well as the several types of notarial wills in Russian law. The paper concludes with a discussion of Russian and Chinese legislation’s various approaches to preserving the genuine will of the testator and the security of the legal transaction.


2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Borisova

AbstractThe article describes and analyses the competing approaches to codification in Russia during the first decades of the nineteenth century following Napoleon (and his Code Civil) and its evaluation in the late nineteenth century. Based on recent methodology—the history of notions (Begriffsgeschichte)—this article presents the history of codification through the perspective of the emergence and development of the Russian legal terms 'svod' (compilation/digest) and 'ulozhenie' (system/code). These terms represented the 'battle flags' of the two parties: on one hand, those whom one might characterize as rationalist, universalist, Enlightenment-oriented, based on the French Revolution and inspired by the Code Napoleon; and, on the other, those who might better be described as history-oriented, traditionalist, romantic, nationalist. Speranskii, initially the prime representative of the first tendency, was ultimately successful as the leader of a Russian codification movement by claiming an original national approach to codification, while in practice combining the two elements. The article seeks to demonstrate that the categories of 'national', 'traditional', 'original'—as well as their opposites, 'universalistic', 'rationalist'—which were used in the political and academic discourse on codification in nineteenth-century Russia, may be analyzed as a rhetorical means of argument skillfully applied by the ambitious drafters of new codes (as well as by their opponents). Contextual analysis of both the Russian and European political background of codification discussions are applied in this work, which leads to conclusions on the construction (and deconstruction) of a national mythology of legal traditions. My view of the creation of a new code of laws (ulozhenie)—during the first three decades of the nineteenth century—is one of the completion of a Russian national project. It became such rather suddenly in the spring of 1812 as a result of both major forces and of chance circumstances, the movement of armies, global ideas and the passions of historical figures. The combination of a number of factors resulted in a situation whereby the political struggle over the new code was conducted through the language of nationalism by contrasting the 'national spirit of the law' with 'foreign principles'. In the struggle for a new code, the opposing sides not only used 'national rhetoric' introduced from outside but, also, changed the Russian language, inventing new 'national' meanings for legal concepts.


2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helge Dedek

Every legal system that ties judicial decision making to a body of preconceived norms has to face the tension between the normative formulation of the ideal and its approximation in social reality. In the parlance of the common law, it is, more concretely, the remedy that bridges the gap between the ideal and the real, or, rather, between norms and facts. In the common law world—particularly in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth—a lively discourse has developed around the question of how rights relate to remedies. To the civilian legal scholar—used to thinking within a framework that strictly categorizes terms like substance and procedure, subjective right, action, and execution—the concept of remedy remains a mystery. The lack of “remedy” in the vocabulary of the civil law is more than just a matter of attaching different labels to functional equivalents, it is the expression of a different way of thinking about law. Only if a legal system is capable of satisfactorily transposing the abstract discourse of the law into social reality does the legal machinery fulfill its purpose: due to the pivotal importance of this translational process, the way it is cast in legal concepts thus allows for an insight into the deep structure of a legal culture, and, convergence notwithstanding, the remaining epistemological differences between the legal traditions of the West. A mixed jurisdiction must reflect upon these differences in order to understand its own condition and to define its future course.


ORDO ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (70) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Cameron Harwick ◽  
Hilton Root

AbstractThis paper draws a distinction between ‘communitarian’ and ‘rationalist’ legal orders on the basis of the implied political strategy. We argue that the West’s solution to the paradox of governance – that a government strong enough to protect rights cannot itself be restrained from violating those rights – originates in certain aspects of the feudal contract, a confluence of aspects of communitarian Germanic law, which enshrined a contractual notion of political authority, and rationalistic Roman law, which supported large-scale political organization. We trace the tradition of strong but limited government to the conflict between factions with an interest in these legal traditions – nobles and the crown, respectively – and draw limited conclusions for legal development in non-Western contexts.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Galina Popova

The article is devoted to the legal history of the lands of the Kingdom of Toledo in the first two hundred years after the Christian reconquest. The assimilation of the conquered lands by the new political power, preserving the border position, leads to the emergence of a special legal tradition, typical for other similar territories, which received the general name “extremadura” — “borderland”. The Fueros, created in the Kingdom of Toledo, from the very beginning, firmly linked the territorial and personal nature of the legal norms included in their texts. The formation of local legal traditions took place with the active participation of the local elite, which was reflected in the editing of Fuero texts. The inhabitants of Toledo were supposed to use the Visigothic "Liber iudiciorum" as a normative basis for legal proceedings, but at the same time maintained the legitimate possibility of resorting to norms of a different origin, the so-called “Fuero of Castilians”. The lack of a strict systematization in the legal framework of the proceedings was reflected in the organization of judicial officials in Toledo. The good preservation of the local act material allows us to consider in more detail the practical implementation of the legal norm in the process of judicial proceedings, recorded in Arabic in the protocol of the end of the 8th century.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-215
Author(s):  
Travis Proctor

The city of Ephesus experienced a marked civic transformation in Late Antiquity. After having centered its settlements and economic fortunes on its proximity to a deep-water harbor for over a millenium, late antique Ephesus gradually shifted to an inland, fortified settlement on Ayasoluk Hill. While several factors undoubtedly informed this civic reorientation, the most commonly cited impetus for Ephesus’s late antique reorientation was the infilling of its deep-water harbor. This article argues that, in addition to this environmental cause, an important cultural shift correspondingly informed Ephesus’s late antique reconfigurations. Namely, the emergence and development of the tomb of John on Ayasoluk Hill, informed by an array of literary legends associating the apostle with the city, increasingly positioned this site as a cultic and economic focal point in Late Antiquity. This article argues that an important early strand in this cultural fabric was the Acts of John, a collection of apocryphal tales that narrate John’s exploits in Ephesus. Significantly, the Acts of John articulates a “counter-cartography” that disassociates Christian identity from prominent Ephesian cultic sites and accentuates the importance of spaces “outside the city” of Ephesus, including and especially the tomb of John. Through its own circulation as well as its influence on later Johannine narratives, the early Acts of John helped inform a shift in the cultural cartographies of Ephesus, where Greco-Roman polytheistic spaces were gradually devalued in favor of Christian sites, the tomb of John on Ayasoluk chief among them.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Poku Adusei

This article provides comprehensive insights into the study of the Ghana legal system as an academic discipline in the law faculties in Ghana. It urges the view that the study of the Ghana legal system, as an academic discipline, should be transsystemic. Transsystemic pedagogy consists in the introduction of ideas, structures and principles which may be drawn from different legal traditions such as civil law, common law, religion-based law, African law and socialist law traditions to influence the study of law. Transsystemia involves teaching law ‘across,’ ‘through,’ and ‘beyond’ disciplinary fixations associated with a particular legal system. It is a mode of scholarship that defies biased allegiance to one legal tradition in order to foster cross-cultural dialogue among legal traditions. It involves a study of law that re-directs focus from one concerned with ‘pure’ legal system to a discourse that is grounded on multiple legal traditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 61-68
Author(s):  
Viktor A. Kovalev ◽  
◽  
Konstantin E. Krylov ◽  

The main theme of the article is investigation of the electoral culture in the European political and legal thought. Authors argue the ancient sources of this tradition tracing it from the three sources — Roman, German and Christian political thoughts. During the Middle Ages European legal concepts of the supreme power’s nature oscillated between hereditary and election as a foundation of the supreme power. Only on the edge of the Middle Ages and the Modern Era monarchy became strait hereditary. The idea of election did not disappear, remains the core ingridient of the image of power’s legitimacy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Ratno Lukito

The distinction in the normative character of legal traditions will give an effect of the state different attitude to those traditions. In the case of Islamic law and adat law in Indonesia, we see that although having different basic character in terms of its foundation of legal creation, Islamic law can relatively be closer to the character of the state law, which is uniform and nationally effective. It is clear here that the nationalization of Islamic law built on the basis of its adherents, and not on the tribe, clan, language, or other local denominations, becomes an effective tool for its rapprochement with the state law, which is also nationalized on the basis of citizenship. Thus, although it is not possible to equalize Islamic law and state law due to the sacredness of the religious law, the scope in the efficacy of both laws can be an effective means of legal rapprochement. This is however not the case with adat law. The character of adat law as a local and heterogeneous legal tradition is intrinsically not in line with the philosophy of national law, which is anti-localism and homogeneous. It is just impossible to bring adat law to become an effective law for all Indonesian citizens. As a result, the rapprochement is difficult between adat law and state law.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document