Dir Rdg in Roman Hist II

PERMISSION OF DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDIES

This course will investigate Roman legal culture by asking, and answering, two essential questions: How did the Romans go about making law? How was that law implemented? Underlying this line of investigation is a much bigger question, which we will at least broach: In the widest sense possible, what did the Romans imagine law to be for? The answer to such a question may not be quite so simple as one might imagine. So as to get at all of this, we will study topics such as: the sources available for law; legal training; expertise in the law -- how it was construed, and what it meant; the writing(s) of the Roman jurists; how the government was structured, so as to create and/or implement law. What we will not examine, so much, are the particular areas of the substantive law -- therefore, not so much the law of sale, or obligations, or delict, or the like. We will get some sense of some of these aspects of Roman law; but, the substance of any given area of the law will not be a focus here. In short, this course is more about something that might be called legal culture.