What Good Did Roman Law Do the Romans?

Professor Bruce W. Frier, Professor of Classics and Roman Law, University of Michigan

5.30pm, Monday 6th June, Ship Street Lecture Theatre, Jesus College (part of the FLJS/CSLS Legalism workshop)

 

During the late Roman Republic and the early Empire (roughly 200 BCE to 200 CE), law was transformed at Rome by two important, and clearly interdependent, developments: first, legal norms came to be recognized as a cognitive field capable of more or less systematic discovery, analysis, organization, and application; second, the legal profession emerged as the social group – initially tiny in number but eventually quite large – who, by virtue of their education, were accorded primary responsibility for maintaining the intellectual coherence of law, above all through their specialized writings.  Both these developments have overwhelming consequence in shaping the subsequent Western legal tradition and Western culture generally.  But it is arguably much less than clear whether the increasing salience of law effected or enabled any deep alteration in the Roman world itself, either in its higher culture or in its governance.  This lecture opened this question for further discussion.