11. Roman Law and the European Ius Commune

Author(s):  
Paul J. du Plessis

The term European ius commune (in its historical sense) signifies that, from the fourteenth to the start of the sixteenth centuries, most of Europe shared a common legal tradition. Many local and regional variations on the law existed, but the terminology, concepts, and structure provided by elements of Roman law provided a common framework. This chapter traces how Justinian’s codification came to influence the modern world. The influence of Roman law in the modern world is immense: it constitutes the historical and conceptual basis of many legal systems throughout the world. Its impact has not been confined to those countries in Western Europe that historically formed part of the Roman Empire. Wherever Europeans went, they normally took their law (usually based to some extent on the principles of Roman law) with them.

1972 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Watson

It is a commonplace that Rome's greatest contribution to the modern world is its law. Whether this is strictly true or not, Roman law is certainly the basis of the law of Western Europe (with the exception of England and Scandinavia), of much of Africa including South Africa, Ethiopia and in general the former colonies of countries in continental Europe, of Quebec and Louisiana, of Japan and Ceylon and so on. Perhaps even more important for the future is that International law is very largely modelled, by analogy, on Roman law. Just think of the perfectly serious arguments of a few years ago as to whether outer space (including the moon and planets) were res nullius or res communes and whether they were, or were not, susceptible of acquisition by occupatio. This persistence of Roman law has had undesirable consequences. First, Roman law as an academic subject has got into the hands of lawyers whose love of technicalities has frightened off classical scholars who tend not to use the legal sources. Secondly, scholars of antiquity, since Roman law is left well alone, have also been reluctant to look at other ancient legal systems. So have lawyers since these other systems have no ‘practical” value. Thirdly, following upon these but worse still, the usefulness of Roman law for later ages, coupled with its enforced isolation from other systems of antiquity, has often led to an exaggerated respect for it, and to its being regarded as well-nigh perfect, immutable, fit for all people. Many in “the Age of Reason” were ready to regard Roman law as “the Law of Reason”.


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 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 469-482
Author(s):  
Ivan Milotić

The protocol of Petar Lazarić, who was simultaneously a domestic priest, prebendary and a notary of Mošćenice, dates back to 1621. It originated in Mošćenice and records in glagolithic script a resolution of a private dispute concerning the property division which was achieved in arbitration. Although the wording of the documents reveals the glagolithic script and is fully made in the Croatian language, if we go beyond that and explore the origins of the essential terms and expressions, we may reach a conclusion that the document substantially records Latin (or Italian) legal technical language which was slightly Croatised in the process of its adoption into the legal system of the commune of Mošćenice. Moreover, the content of the document puts forth legal principles, concepts and institutes of the extrajudicial dispute resolution which were consistently applied in Mošćenice following the model of arbitration in Roman law. All the essentials of the document at hand reflect the strong influences of the Roman legal tradition and the ius commune. The author provides an analysis in this paper which addresses all the relevant institutes that were applied in the arbitration dispute at hand referring to the procedural and substantive law at the same time. The author searches for the Roman model of these institutes, evaluates them from perspective of Roman and canon law of the Middle and New Ages and, finally, he brings this particular legal source in relation to the other two which originated in Mošćenice in the first half of the 17th century that both record significant influences of the Roman legal tradition of the time: The Statute of Mošćenice of 1637 and the boundary dispute between Lovran and Mošćenice of 1646.


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard P. Liggio

AbstractThis paper traces back the sources of our present legal system and of market economy to Medieval Europe which itself benefited from Hellenistic and Roman legal culture and commercial practices. Roman provinces placed Rome in the wider Greek cultural and commercial world. If Aristotle was already transcending the narrow polis-based conceptions of his predecessors, after him Hellenistic Civilization saw the emergence of a new school of philosophy: Stoicism. The legal thought in the Latin West will hence be characterized by Cicero’s writings and its Stoic sources. The Roman legal system was similar to the later northern European customary law and the English common law; Roman law was evolutionary and customary. The rise of Western individualism, whether it dates back to St. Augustine in the fifth century, or to the two Papal Revolutions of Gregory I (establishing the nuclear family as the core of individualism) and of Gregory VII, also played a crucial role in shaping the western legal tradition. The paper describes the main forces that led to this second (Gregorian) revolution. Monasticism is one of them. Benedictine monasticism plaid a leading role in the Peace of God Movement. Hence collective oath-taking by groups in the name of peace was essential in the founding of cities and in the formation of guilds. Europe’s economic resurgence in the Eleventh Century was on the basis of the creation of the rule of law by the Peace of God movement. This movement also allowed for Europe’s agricultural economy to progress. Indeed, the European Middle Ages is one of the major periods of technological innovation in the history of the world. The Gregorian Revolution itself was supported and financed by the Commercial Revolution: Italian bankers sustained Papal reformers against the Emperors. The independence of the Italian cities and provinces reveals one of the most important consequences of the Gregorian Revolution: the polycentricism of Western Europe. This Revolution also witnessed the first large number of political pamphlets in European history; the Gregorian clergy emphasizing a compact theory of government. Soon after, the order of Cistercians was founded (1098) and underwent spectacular growth during the next two centuries. The Cistercians accepted no rents or labor services from feudal donors but would take only full possession of land to do with it as they wished.These monasteries were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time. Finally, the Magna Carta (1215) that will be so influential on modern political thought can be seen as a direct consequence of the Gregorian Revolution.


1965 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. E. J. Cowdrey

It is not at first sight easy to explain the ever-growing appeal which Cluny had during the tenth and eleventh centuries for clergy and still more for laymen, particularly in Burgundy, France, Christian Spain and North Italy. The basis of Cluniac life was the choir service of the monks and the silence and ordered round of the cloister. By and large the Cluniacs did not seek to work outside the cloister or to become involved in wider pastoral care. They were, indeed, concerned for the Church and for the world at large, but with a view to winning individuals to share spiritually and to support materially the other-worldly ends of the monastic order. Yet, especially under abbots Odilo and Hugh, there was a rapid rise in the number of houses subject to Cluny or otherwise influenced by it; a Cluniac house formed part of the neighbourhood of a large part of the people who lived to the south and west of Lorraine. Cluny itself was well situated to attract travellers, and its dependencies were especially important on the pilgrimage routes. Together with the increasing number of Cluniac houses the long series of charters which record its endowment with monasteries, churches, lands and other wealth testify to its impact upon Church and Society in western Europe.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-223
Author(s):  
Anton D. Rudokvas ◽  
◽  
Andrej A. Novikov ◽  

The article describes the application of Byzantine law in the region of Bessarabia which formed part of the Russian Empire from the early 19th century until 1917. The empire allowed the local population to apply their local laws for the regulation of their civil law relations. Due to historical reasons, these local laws were identified with the law of the Byzantine Empire which had already disappeared in 1453. The authors of the article provide a general description of the sources of Bessarabian law and then turn to case study research regarding the jurisprudence of courts on the issues of the Law of Succession in Bessarabia. They demonstrate that in interpreting the provisions of the law applicable, Russian lawyers often referred to Roman law as a doctrinal background of Byzantine law. Furthermore, they did not hesitate to identify Roman law with Pandect law. Even though the doctrine of the Law of Pandects had been created in Germany on the basis of Roman law texts, it was far from the content of the original law of the Ancient Roman Empire. The fate of the practical application of Byzantine law in Bessarabia reflects some general problems of the ‘legal transplants’ in the history of law and therefore provides additional materials for the theoretical study of the issues of ‘legal transfer’ in history and nowadays.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (519) ◽  
pp. 36-41
Author(s):  
K. V. Drymalovska ◽  
◽  
R. O. Kyryliuk ◽  

As competition in international and national markets intensifies, it is important to create a system to protect economic actors from potential threats and adverse factors. To solve these issues, it is necessary to ensure the effective functioning of the insurance market, which is one of the important components of financial security. Without the developed insurance market, it will be impossible to ensure the social and economic progress of the country, its corporate security, welfare etc. The current state of the world insurance market has certain features, which makes it possible to adapt to the change of the modern world and improve the work of the insurance industry. To create a clear insurance market, it is necessary to develop an effective policy as to the insurance activities of both the insurer and the reinsurers, as well as to establish solvency insurance systems. The development of the insurance market is accompanied by many economic, regulatory, organizational, methodological and personnel issues. The publication is aimed at studying and distinguishing the peculiarities of development of the world market of insurance services. On the basis of studying the works of scholars, the main features of the modern insurance market are provided; key signs of the insurance industry are presented; statistical information on trends in the insurance market development during 2019 in the following regions: North and Latin America, Western Europe, Asia, European developing countries. The impact of COVID-19 on the state of the insurance industry in Europe has been characterized. As result of studying the key trends in the future development of the insurance market, the main components that are necessary for the formation of an effective policy of insurance companies in the context of COVID-19 have been formed as follows: digitalization, innovation, analytics, feedback.


The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Romans and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture and identity. As a result, the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet in these centuries, the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions that they bequeathed to Europe. Situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting northern Europe with the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, Merovingian Gaul also benefitted from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. In this collection of 46 essays by scholars of Merovingian history, archaeology, and art history, we encounter the new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era.


Legal Studies ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-260
Author(s):  
Neil Duxbury

Much has often been made of Maine's striking opening sentence to his Ancient Law, in which he states that the most celebrated system of jurisprudence in the world, the Roman law system, ‘begins, as it ends, with a code.’ It is a remark which serves well those who argue that law has evolved as a predominantly written culture. Yet, as Maine points out, the publication of the Twelve Tables (these traditionally being regarded as the foundation of Roman law) ‘is not the earliest point at which we can take up the history of law.’


Author(s):  
Claudia Storti

Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries several issues led jurists to rethink the international legal order established in the Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages. The first was the need to update the list of the law of nations legitimate subjects after the birth of the commune that had not been accounted for in Roman-law sources. The second was to recreate a superior and universally shared set of ‘public’ law rules for international relations to counteract the tendency of communal and monarchical governments to consider the law inter gentes as a form of internal law. In order to address this issue Bartolus of Sassoferrato adapted the Roman category of ius gentium to the features of the medieval geopolitical context. Other topics focused on defining the enemy, freedom of peoples, and treaties among unequal subjects, while the theory of ius gentium of Alberico Gentili was fully rooted in the medieval and early modern legal tradition.


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