Legal History Commons^™

Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis: Oddities Of Legal Development, And Human Civilisation, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

The most momentous event in secular legal history is also perhaps the weirdest: Justinian's compilation, now known as the Corpus Iuris Civilis. Unsurprisingly, scholars have avoided stressing how odd the Corpus Iuris is. The most likely explanation is that it is so highly regarded that they have not noticed. They accept its high reputation, hence for them high quality is a given. This is a theme to which I return and no doubt will continue to return. The Corpus Iuris is so central in history, for understanding how law develops, and is so important today.

Repraesentatio In Classical Latin, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

The Romans knew well the twin concepts of representation and representatives in law suits and in the relationships between father and son, and owner and slave. But for these concepts they did not use the terms repraesentare or any cognate.

To Tertullian, it seems, goes the credit of first using repraesentare and repraesentator in their modern senses of <> and <>. That his context is theological probably should not surprise since he is, above all, a theologian.

Thus he uses repraesentare to mean that the one larger and more important may represent the many and less important. This usage had a …