The evolution of pignus in classical Roman law
Ius honorarium and ‘ius novum’

2013 ◽  
Vol 81 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
H.L.E. Verhagen
Keyword(s):  
Intangible Assets ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Party Autonomy ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Security Interest ◽  
The Law ◽  
Physical Asset

The Roman pledge (pignus) developed from a possessory pledge on a single physical asset owned at the time of pledging by the debtor into a versatile security interest that could be created as a non-possessory security interest over all the debtor’s present and future tangible and intangible assets. This evolutionary process was triggered by transactional practices which were recognised by the ius honorarium. At a later stage the Severan rescript practice (‘ius novum’) took over the leading role in developing the law of pledge. While the ius honorarium generally recognised party autonomy, by upholding transactional practises, the ius novum placed limitations on it, in particular in order to protect the debtor. 


scholarly journals Non Liquet: From Modern Law to Roman Law

1974 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Mordechai Rabello
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Insufficient Evidence ◽  
The Law ◽  
Code Civil

1.May a Judge Refuse to Pronounce Judgment?: In modern legal systems, the judge cannot as a rule evade his basic duty, that of adjudicating. He has the option of either allowing or of rejecting the plaintiff's claims. Under the rules of criminal procedure adopted by several countries, he may acquit for insufficient evidence. But he cannot be released from exercising his function as a judge, claiming either that the facts of the case are not sufficiently clear to him (factual doubt), or that the norm to be applied in the specific case cannot be determined (judicial doubt), or even that there exists no fixed norm for the determination of the case (lacunain the law).Thus theCode Civil des Français(orCode Napoléon) lays down explicitly: “A judge who refuses to decide a case, on the pretext that the law is silent, obscure or insufficient, may be prosecuted as being guilty of denial of justice”. This article is the outcome of a long evolutionary process. Prior to the French Revolution, before the separation of powers, the main question was not that oflacunaebut rather that of the directions given to the judge in order to help him carry out his functions.

Without the Power to Drink or Contract

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48
Author(s):  
Warren Swain
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Current Position ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
Over Time

Intoxication as a ground to set aside a contract is not something that has proved to be easy for the law to regulate. This is perhaps not very surprising. Intoxication is a temporary condition of varying degrees of magnitude. Its presence does however raise questions of contractual autonomy and individual responsibility. Alcohol consumption is a common social activity and perceptions of intoxication and especially alcoholism have changed over time. Roman law is surprisingly quiet on the subject. In modern times the rules about intoxicated contracting in Scottish and English law is very similar. Rather more interestingly the law in these two jurisdictions has reached the current position in slightly different ways. This history can be traced through English Equity, the works of the Scottish Institutional writers, the rise of the Will Theory, and all leavened with a dose of judicial pragmatism.

A Comparative Overview of the Fair Wear and Tear Exception: the Duty of Holders of Temporary Interests to Preserve Property

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Raffaele Caterina
Keyword(s):  
Common Core ◽  
Complete Solution ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Private Ownership ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
Wear And Tear ◽  
Long Life ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

“A system of private ownership must provide for something more sophisticated than absolute ownership of the property by one person. A property owner needs to be able to do more than own it during his lifetime and pass it on to someone else on his death.”1 Those who own things with a long life quite naturally feel the urge to deal in segments of time. Most of the owner's ambitions in respect of time can be met by the law of contract. But contract does not offer a complete solution, since contracts create only personal rights. Certain of the owner's legitimate wishes can be achieved only if the law allows them to be given effect in rem—that is, as proprietary rights. Legal systems have responded differently to the need for proprietary rights limited in time. Roman law created usufruct and other iura in re aliena; English law created different legal estates. Every system has faced similar problems. One issue has been the extent to which the holder of a limited interest should be restricted in his or her use and enjoyment in order to protect the holders of other interests in the same thing. A common core of principles regulates the relationship between those who hold temporary interests and the reversioners. For instance, every system forbids holder of the possessory interest to damage the thing arbitrarily. But other rules are more controversial. This study focuses upon the rules which do not forbid, but compel, certain courses of action.

LEGAL SKETCH «THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LEGAL EXCUSES AND PROVERBS OF ANCIENT ROME AS A MEANS OF LEGAL PROPAGANDA ABOUT LEGAL KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURE»

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kukharev ◽  
Alexander Rusu
Keyword(s):  
Digital Age ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Making

This article discusses adaptation of the norms and ideals of Roman law to modern legal culture, the basis of Roman legal relations, which is the basis of modern law-making. It is important to learn how the culture of the law of ancient Rome influenced the formation of modern law of the digital age. The purpose of writing the paper was to highlight the influence of the legal culture of ancient Rome on modern reality.

The Laws of Hammurabi

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Barmash
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

The Laws of Hammurabi is one of the earliest law codes, dating from the eighteenth century BCE Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). It is the culmination of a tradition in which scribes would demonstrate their legal flair by composing statutes on a repertoire of traditional cases, articulating what they deemed just and fair. The book describes how the scribe of the Laws of Hammurabi advanced beyond earlier scribes in composing statutes that manifest systematization and implicit legal principles. The scribe inserted the statutes into the structure of a royal inscription, skillfully reshaping the genre. This approach allowed the king to use the law code to demonstrate that Hammurabi had fulfilled the mandate to guarantee justice enjoined upon him by the gods, affirming his authority as king. This tradition of scribal improvisation on a set of traditional cases continued outside of Mesopotamia, influencing biblical law and the law of the Hittite Empire and perhaps shaping Greek and Roman law. The Laws of Hammurabi is also a witness to the start of another stream of intellectual tradition. It became a classic text and the subject of formal commentaries, marking a Copernican revolution in intellectual culture.

scholarly journals Illogicality and Roman Law

1972 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Watson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
International Law ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Law

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”.

scholarly journals The End of Roman Juristic Writing

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 228-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Watson
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Support ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
The Law

I first met Reuven Yaron in 1958, and we immediately became fast friends. The friendship with him and Shoshana has deepened over the years, and will continue. He and I have frequently read one another's draft papers. I thank him for many years of intellectual and emotional support, and hope he will take pleasure in this offering that he has had no possibility of criticising in advance.The traditional date for the end of classical Roman law is 235 when the emperor Alexander Severus was murdered, or slightly later with the death of Modestinus, the last of the great known jurists. Thereafter, few original juristic books were written, and it is widely but not universally believed that a decline in legal standards began almost at once.For many scholars there seems to exist a connection, sometimes simply implicit, between the failure of jurists to write new books, and a decline in legal standards. I should like to suggest there was a different reason for jurists ceasing to write new law books. They had already written them all! The claim that for the period, say fifty years, after around 235, all the law books had already been written seems extreme, but is easy to substantiate.

Quintilian and the Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 258-277
Author(s):  
Olga Tellegen-Couperus
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Legal Expert ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Of Succession ◽  
The Relationship

How did Quintilian regard the relationship between rhetoric and law? It is only in the last book of his Institutio oratoria that Quintilian deals with this question. In 12.3 he states that the well-educated orator must have a broad knowledge of the law so that he will not be dependent on information from a legal expert. In the course of the book, Quintilian shows that he himself was well acquainted with Roman law for he often explains rhetorical technique by giving legal examples, and these examples deal with a wide variety of topics and refer to a wide variety of sources. The topics include criminal law and private law, particularly the law of succession, and legal procedure. The sources range from speeches by Cicero to fictitious laws and cases. Quintilian regarded rhetoric as superior to law but he will have agreed with Cicero that rhetoric and law were partners in dignity.

The Influence of Roman Law

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald R. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The Law ◽  
Civil Science

Centuries of Roman jurisprudence were assembled in the great Byzantine collection, the Digest, by Tribonian and the other editors. Roman law became more formal when during the Renaissance of the twelfth century it came to be taught in the first universities, starting with Bologna and the teaching of Irnerius. The main channels of expansion were through the Glossators and post-Glossators, who commented on the main texts and on later legislation by the Holy Roman Emperors, which included “feudal law,” but also by notaries and other proto-lawyers. Christian doctrine also became part of the “Roman” tradition, and canon and civil law were taught together in the universities as “civil science.” According to the ancient Roman jurist Gaius, “all the law which we use pertains either to persons or to things or to actions,” three categories that exhaust the external human condition—personality, reality, and action. In the nineteenth century, the study of Roman law lost its ideological power and became part of philology and history, at least so concludes James Whitman.

Slavery

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gamauf
Keyword(s):  
Roman Law ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
The Law ◽  
Almost All

In Roman law slaves were chattels and persons at the same time. As persons, they were incapable of holding any rights. But this deficit led to their use as business agents because they could obtain rights for their masters, whereas free persons under classical Roman law could not. While the law tried to hold up the fiction that all slaves were the complete subjects of their masters and that no legal distinctions existed among slaves in this regard, their social positions, as reflected in the legal sources, differed widely. Since Roman jurists were confronted with almost all aspects of slavery, their writings show social differentiations between various types of slaves as far as these caused adjustments of their legal treatment. But at the same time the legal sources also document when, for the sake of the master’s interest or the public’s, social differences between slaves were levelled out.

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