scholarly journals Civilians and insurance: approximations of reality to the law

2015 ◽  
Vol 83 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 323-364
Author(s):  
Guido Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

In the study of the history of insurance, much attention has been paid to early modern jurists. Their importance as a source for the study of the subject is, however, debatable. Early modern jurists were more interested in systematising insurance than in describing it for what it was. Their main effort lay in explaining this non-Roman contract in Roman law terms. To do so, something had to be sacrificed - reality.


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.

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 Introduction: Some ponderings on the use of the law in the writing of histories

2001 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-175
Author(s):  
NIMROD HURVITZ ◽  
EDWARD FRAM
Keyword(s):  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Partial Reconstruction ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Hours ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

Professional jurists are often inquisitive about the subject matter of their calling and in the course of their careers may well develop fascinating insights into the law and those who interpret it. Their employers, however, be they governments, corporations, firms, or private clients, rarely show similar enthusiasm for such insights unless the hours spent pondering the social or historical significance of this or that legal view have a contemporary value that justifies the lawyer's fee.Thankfully, other members of society are rewarded for mining the legal records of the past. For legal historians, the search often focuses on the changing legal ideas and how legal doctrine develops over time to meet the changing needs of societies. Yet because the law generally deals with concrete matters – again, because jurists are paid by people who are unlikely to remunerate those who simply while away their hours making up legal cases – it offers a reservoir of information that can be used, albeit with caution, in fields other than just the history of the law.A partial reconstruction of the law of any given time and place is among the more obvious historical uses of legal documents but statutes, practical decisions, and even theoretical texts can be used to advance other forms of the historical endeavour. Legal works often reflect the values both of jurists and society-at-large, for while the law creates social values it is not immune to changes in these very values.

scholarly journals Roman Tribune Cola di Rienzo (1347), Res Gestae Divi Augusti and Lex de Imperio Vespasiani

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-104
Author(s):  
Milan Lovenjak
Keyword(s):  
Asia Minor ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ancient Documents ◽  
The Law ◽  
Dramatic Adaptations ◽  
Considerable Detail

The anonymous and fragmentarily preserved Romance-dialect Chronicle describing the history of Rome in 1325–1360, the extensive correspondence between Cola di Rienzo (1313–1354) and rulers, nobles, Church dignitaries, and intellectuals (especially Petrarch) in Italy and abroad, as well as various documentary sources allow us to trace Rienzo’s career in considerable detail. A papal notary, a scholar in Classical literature, an exceptional orator and a copyist and translator of Ancient Roman inscriptions, Rienzo, aided by a group of followers, overthrew the baron rule in Rome in May 1347, assumed the title of ‘Roman Tribune’ and seized power with the aim of reuniting Italy under a common emperor, a concept modelled on the first Roman emperor, Augustus. After undertaking a number of more or less successful measures, public manifestations and diplomatic activities, he was forced to retreat by a clash with the barons’ army even before the end of the year. After years of exile, he returned triumphant in the middle of 1354 to seize power, but the first few weeks of tyranny and arbitrary measures led to his tragic demise at the hands of an infuriated mob. Later he grew into the subject of myth, portrayed in numerous literary, musical, and dramatic adaptations. The present paper examines two ancient documents crucial to the formation of the principate (the renewal of which was Cola’s objective), i.e. Augustus’ account of his own deeds (Res gestae divi Augusti), which is mentioned by Suetonius and known from three epigraphically attested copies from Asia Minor, and a bronze plaque bearing a law on the conferment of powers on Emperor Vespasian, the so-called Lex de imperio Vespasiani. The plaque was used as propaganda by Cola during his preparations for the coup. The inconsistencies between the parts of the law preserved on the plaque (it must have been preceded by at least one other plaque) and the account of Cola’s interpretation as given in the anonymous Chronicle raise a number of questions, which resist definitive answers.

The State

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Republican Government ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Modern Times

It is often said that the subject matter of political philosophy is the nature and justification of the state. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel thinks that political science is “nothing other than an attempt to comprehend and portray the state as an inherently rational entity.” John Rawls famously understands “the primary subject of justice [to be] the basic structure of society,” restricting his attentions to a society “conceived for the time being as a closed system isolated from other societies,” and assuming that “the boundaries of these schemes are given by the notion of a self-contained national community.” Contemporary political philosophers often follow suit, disagreeing about what states should do, and simply assuming that they are the proper agents of justice or reform. The history of philosophy and the development of political concepts seem to be central to understanding the state. The influence of Roman law and republican government, and the rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are obvious important influences. The modern state emerged first in Western Europe in early modern times.

Past Belief

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Anthony Grafton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the centrality of early modern ecclesiastical history, written by Catholics as well as Protestants, in the refinement of research techniques and practices anticipatory of modern scholarship. To Christians of all varieties, getting the Church's early history right mattered. Eusebius's fourth-century history of the Church opened a royal road into the subject, but he made mistakes, and it was important to be able to ferret them out. Saint Augustine was recognized as a sure-footed guide to the truth about the Church's original and bedrock beliefs, but some of the Saint's writings were spurious, and it was important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. To distinguish true belief from false, teams of religious scholars gathered documents; the documents in turn were subjected to skeptical scrutiny and philological critique; and sources were compared and cited. The practices of humanistic scholarship, it turns out, came from within the Catholic Church itself as it examined its own past.

Playing the Past: Approaches to English Historical Drama, 1385–1600. By Benjamin Griffin. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2001; pp. xiii + 193. $70 cloth.

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-309
Author(s):  
Paulette Marty
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dramatic Structure ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
History Play

Benjamin Griffin takes an innovative approach to studying the history-play genre in early modern England. Rather than comparing history plays to their chronicle sources or interrogating their political implications, Griffin studies their relationships with other early modern English dramas, contextualizing them for “those who wish . . . to understand the history play by way of the history of plays” (xiii). He seeks to identify the genre's distinct characteristics by selecting a relatively broad spectrum of plays and examining their dramatic structure, their historical content, and their audiences' relationship to the subject matter.

Some Problems in the History of the Law of Nations in Asia (1963)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

This chapter considers problems in the study of the history of the law of nations in Asia. It argues that international lawyers have focused their attention on the legal aspects of contemporary problems of international relations and politics, and on the operation of tribunals and quasi-tribunals and the case law they produce. Writers of present day treatises of international law devote just a few introductory pages to the history of the subject and these short chapters are often based on similar introductions in nineteenth-century treatises. The chapter discusses some of the elements of legal change in which European–Asian relations played a significant role; the gradual elimination of the natural law outlook by growing European positivism; the principle of universality of the law of nations and the principle of identity of de facto and de jure State sovereignty; and the use of capitulations to delay the ‘entry’ of Asian States into the family of nations.

scholarly journals PERSONHOOD, ANIMALS, AND THE LAW

Think ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (34) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
Roman Law ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Law

The idea that all the entities in the world may be, for legal and moral purposes, divided into the two categories of ‘persons’ and ‘things’ comes down to us from the tradition of Roman law. In the law, a ‘person’ is essentially the subject of rights and obligations, while a thing may be owned as property. In ethics, a person is an object of respect, to be valued for her own sake, and never to be used as a mere means to an end, while a thing has only a derivative value, and may be used as a means to some person's ends. This bifurcation is unfortunate because it seems to leave us with no alternative but to categorize everything as either a person or a thing. Yet some of the entities that give rise to the most vexing ethical problems are exactly the ones that do not seem to fit comfortably into either category. For various, different, kinds of reasons, it seems inappropriate to categorize a fetus, a non-human animal, the environment, or an object of great beauty, as a person, but neither does it seem right to say of such things that they are to be valued only as means.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document