Law Commons^™

Fox Hunting, Pheasant Shooting And Comparative Law, Alan Watson, Khaled Abou El Fadl

Scholarly Works

The Roman jurists, ancient rabbis and Muslim jurists were very different people. Above all, the rabbis and Muslim jurists were engaged on a search for law as truth. And the Roman jurists were much more obviously upper-class gentlemen.91 But the similarities are great. All three had a passion for legal interpretation. They delighted in discussing hypothetical cases. They chased after solutions by ways of reasoning devised by themselves. Practical utility, while present, was in the background. At times, to outsiders, their opinions seem outr6, even callous, remote from reality. They have little interest in what actually happens in court: their …

Rights Of Slaves And Other Owned-Animals, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

Part of a number of essays which follow are written by experts from various interdisciplinary fields at the request of Animal Law.

I chose the title with deliberation. My concern in this paper is not with moral theory, but with the law that has given rights to owned-animals, and the extent to which these rights have been enforced.

I believe that there is a three-fold hierarchy as to the extent of these rights in accordance with the animal that is their object. At the top of the hierarchy are rights accorded to slaves under a legal system that is not …

Trade Secrets And Roman Law: The Myth Exploded, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

In 1929 A. Arthur Schiller published a celebrated article, Trade Secrets and the Roman Law; the Actio Servi Corrupti. His main conclusions are that the Roman owner of a mark or firm name was legally protected against unfair usage by a competitor through the actio servi corrupti, “action for making a slave worse,” which the Roman jurists used to grant commercial relief under the guise of private law actions. “If, as the writer believes [writes Schiller], various private causes of action were available in satisfying commercial needs, the state was acting in exactly the same fashion as it …

A Slave's Marriage: Dowry Or Deposit, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

This articles examines the concept of dowry among marriage of slaves in ancient Rome.

Roman Law And English Law: Two Patterns Of Legal Development, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

It is commonplace among scholars to link in thought the growth of Roman law and of English law. S.F.C. Milsom begins his distinguished Historical Foundations of the Common Law with the words: "It has happened twice only that the customs of European peoples were worked up into intellectual systems of law; and much of the world today is governed by laws derived from the one or the other." More strikingly, some scholars see an essential similarity in legal approaches in the two systems. Fritz Pringsheim entitled a well-known article The Inner Relationship Between English and Roman Law. W.W. Buckland and …

The Origins Of Usus, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

It has long been recognized that the XII Tables was not a complete statement of the law, and that some topics of great legal importance were either not set out or were very partially treated. The general opinion has been, however, that the fragmentary state of our knowledge of the XII Tables' provisions makes it impossible to be precise as to the the topics not dealt with or treated only in part. Recently, though, I have tried to show that we have some information on the great majority of the clauses in the XII Tables: hence on this view, where …

Emptio, "Taking", Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

According to Festus, "Emere, quod nunc est mer cari, antiqui acdpiebant pro sumere" and modern philologists do accept some such meaning as the original in Latin. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae however, thinks there is no certain example of this sense of emere and considers the instances adduced by Skutsch to be scarcely convincing. I should like to produce for consideration a different instance drawn from the derivative emptio or emptor. The instance in question may not take us as far back as emere = sumere but will at least to emere = accipere. Roman legal tradition tells us that the …

Tignum Iunctum: The Xii Tables And A Lost Word, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

A text of the scholar Festus, which is famous among Latinists and lawyers alike, reads:

Tignum non solum in aedificiis, quo utuntur, appellatur, sed etiam in vineis, ut est in XII: "Tignum iunctum aedibus vineave et concapit ne solvito".

For the quotation from the XII Tables, the manuscripts showsome variation for 'vineave': 'victum' in W, 'vineaque' in V and 'minerve' in X. But these we can happily leave aside and com to the crux of the text, 'concapit', which appears in all the manuscripts. "'Concapit', a corrupt word, and difficult of explanation" say Lewis and Short! And the emendations proposed …

Illogicality And Roman Law, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

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 …

The Original Meaning Of Pauperies, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

The very name, 'actio de pauperie', presents us squarely with the problem. Why should this action -- dealing with damage caused by animals -- and this action alone come to be called 'the action on poverty'? For the word 'pauperies' in the later Republic and the Empire does have the primary meaning of 'poverty'. This problem does not stand by itself. The 'actio de pauperie' is old, and goes back at least to the XII Tables. Why does it -- apparently at least -- give a remedy for damage of all kinds, whereas the later lex Aquilia of 287 B.C. …

Identity Of Sarapio, Socrates, Logus And Nilus In The Will Of C. Longinus Castor, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

This article examines the Will of C. Longinus Castor which was executed and sealed on 17th of November 189 A.D. The Will names five different individuals as beneficiaries and this article examines the relationship between them and C. Longinus Castor.