>Roman law distinguished crime from delict (tort) and, under the Empire, had public prosecution and state punishment. >Germanic law treated almost all wrongs as matters between the victim's kin and the perpetrator's kin, resolved by wergild — a scheduled compensation payment calibrated to the victim's social status, designed to prevent blood feud. Every part of the body had a price (so many shillings for a thumb, so many for an eye, graduated by the victim's rank). Kill a nobleman's son and you owed his kin the noble rate; kill a slave and you paid the owner the slave rate. This is compensation as substitute for revenge, which is conceptually different from Roman damages as restitution for harm or punishment for wrong.
One thesis: essentially, Rome turned the family into an LLC. People (and not their respective families) were responsible for their own actions. The later development of corporation is a result of a fictitious family. Now, where this could get even more interesting is where Rome got its laws from. I'll post a summary as picrel of the original basis for Roman law, published around 450 BC when the peasants rebelled against oligarchs and demanded their law be written down instead of guarded by the priests of the families. Yes... Roman religious history is fucking weird, and people should notice that more.
>The main text on bee-law, Bechbretha, also devotes much attention to the legal consequences of stings from bees>If a person is stung while robbing or moving the bee-hives, or even while looking over the hives at swarming time, the beekeeper is not liable. But if a bee stings a neighbour or passer-by who is not interfering with the bees in any way, the beekeeper must provide him with a meal of honey. The victim must, however, swear an oath that he did not kill the bee which stung him. This is because of the general principle in early Irish law that the life of an animal is forfeit for its offence.
>>18436502I went looking for a connection from Rome to something older (before 450 BC), and this is what I found.Here is how I parse this: Mesopotamians conquered Canaan around 700 BC. That's the Assyrian Empire. Before Assyria, there was no "unified Canaan", but the fiction around it generally describes all Celts, some of whom were Phoenicians, or Canaanites. Assyrian conquest brings new legal authority which becomes distributed via traditional Phoenician routes of trade. The new aristocracy after the fall of Assyria continue expanding west and as well as making up the class of nobility that follows. After Assyria, you have Medes, Babylonians, and Persians. Yes, Persia derives from Iranian culture strictly speaking (they are an Iranian tribe), but the Persian Empire was Iranians playing the game of the Mesopotamians. My reason for suggesting this is that Proto-Indo-European (including Iranaian as well as German and Celtic/Gaelic/Canaanite) culture did not have the legal structure to do business like the Romans or like the Babylonians. The Mesopotamians and Romans are more property-focused. Property focused law is ruled by property holders who want to control their debtees like slaves. That sounds a lot like the modern structure, which seems to have a legal basis.
sauce for german vs roman law
Here's an interesting fact. Lawyers in republican and early imperial rome were not supposed to collect fees, and were supposed to represent people as a public service because they believed their friend was innocent or the opposing party was guilty (there was no public prosecutor at that time). Though in reality people still obtained the best lawyers by "paying" them through favors such as business opportunities, loans at very favorable terms, or partisan support in elections.But in Tacitus' Annals book XI chapter 7 he states that during the time of the Emperor Claudius some lawyers in the senate convinced the emperor to reform this system, and to pass a new law allowing lawyers to openly charge fees for their services like any other trade. But the emperor limited the "maximum fee" an advocate could charge on a single case to an eye watering 10,000 Sestertius, and remember that is just for one case. Tacitus said even this was sometimes ignored, and clients would provide favors or "gifts" to their lawyers in excess of the max fee. I guess if you're being sued or facing criminal charges you'll pay anything to win. Anyway, for some context, at this time the annual salary for a legionary soldier was 700 Sestertius, which was considerably more than the average laborer. So that's 14 years pay for a soldier for a lawyer to handle just one case for you.While I'm sure not every Roman lawyer was a near equal to Cicero, who could command that maximum fee from their wealthy clients, being a lawyer seems like it had to have been one of the better jobs to have in ancient Rome.Just like today :)
The idea of "Germanic law" is appealing in its fatalistic view of courage, Tolkien talks about this. Trial by combat especially seems based on the surface level. But the major problem is that it can only exist on technicalities. What is "fair" in that context? I think dueling should at least be an option. Like if one side wants to duel, a duel is on, by right. That sword of Damocles should be dangling over the skull of every libtard and brownoid, because it is ultimately only fear that keeps them in line.
>>18436534Interesting how both seem so mediative compared to say, Hammurabi or something you'd read from medieval China. The pre-Christian European approach seems like that of a healer holding the collective in triage, trying to mend them at least in concept. Corruption is inevitable but both seem like beautiful expressions of the whole of law.
>>18436546Mediative? I think the Romans approach property similar to how Babylonians do. Look at Roman bankruptcy law. Debt punishable by death.
>>18436499Lorica-wearing legionaries of the peak of the empire would’ve been largely sourced from along the rhine/danube since they were recruited locally, i.e. modern Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, etc.Besides that, justice is more important than some gay free market NAP “i paid you 10,000 so it’s okay for my son to kill your son” bullshit. Wergild existed because it was feasible for what dispute resolution looked like in its time and place but it’s downright barbaric.
>>18436626>Debt punishable by deathInsolvency rather.
>>18436542700,000k in legal fees being presented as an absurdity is itself absurd.Patent cases especially can easily climb absurdly high. Like $150 million. But also legal fees in the modern day are revenue and not profit so a lot of that can be eaten up for the actual partners due to the sheer expenses of having dozens of highly trained people grinding for years on something.>Just like today :)I’m sure people seethed about it then too
>The "third university of England." Sir John Fortescue, a 15th-century Chief Justice, described the Inns as effectively England's third university, alongside Oxford and Cambridge. This is historically important: England's universities taught Roman and canon law (the ius commune), but the Inns taught English common law, in English and French, by practitioners. This institutional separation is the direct reason English common law remained distinct from Continental Roman-law tradition. Oxford and Cambridge produced civilians (Roman/canon lawyers who worked in ecclesiastical and admiralty courts, organized separately as Doctors' Commons near St Paul's — dissolved in 1865), while the Inns produced common lawyers. Two parallel professions, two parallel legal systems, one country.I'm now reading about the history of English law. Apparently common law was developed and operated in separate to the ecclesiastical and admiralty law. Admiralty law stands out as it is the law that would most govern intelligence operations in the ancient world, and it appears to be the connected to the old world order. I know it is brought up a lot in conspiracy theories.
Interesting dig on the Templars:>The City of London — "the Square Mile" — is itself one of the oldest continuous legal entities in the Anglo-Saxon/English world. Its liberties were recognized by William the Conqueror in 1067 (the "William Charter," a tiny document in Old English promising the citizens their existing rights), confirmed repeatedly, and enshrined in Magna Carta (1215) Chapter 13: "the City of London shall have all its ancient liberties and free customs." The City has its own Lord Mayor (a position dating to 1189), its own Corporation governance, its own courts, and its own police force (the City of London Police, separate from the Metropolitan Police). It predates Parliament, the modern Crown, and practically every other English institution.>The City was and is governed through its livery companies — the 110-plus trade and craft guilds, the oldest being the Weavers (chartered 1155, but arguably older), the Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths (the "Great Twelve" and many more). The livery companies collectively elect the Lord Mayor, and the Corporation's peculiar franchise gives significant voting weight to businesses within the Square Mile. This is an extraordinary constitutional holdover — a medieval guild republic operating inside a modern state.>>The Inns of Court are not livery companies of the City, for the reason already given: they were pushed out of the City by royal decree in 1234, and they settled just outside its boundary. Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn are in the Borough of Camden, not the City. The two Temples are geographically inside the City of London, but they have a special status as liberties — effectively exempt jurisdictions, governed by their own benchers rather than by the City Corporation. This goes back to their Templar origin as an international religious order exempt from local jurisdiction, and the exemption simply passed to the lawyers.
More on Roman legal history:What was ius gentium?>It wasn't international law in the modern sense. It wasn't law between states; it was Roman law applied to cases involving non-Romans. The modern concept of international law — rules governing sovereign states' relations with each other — grew out of ius gentium but wasn't the same thing. Grotius and the early international lawyers of the 17th century were deliberately extending the concept.>It was partly empirical, partly philosophical. Gaius defines it as "that which natural reason establishes among all peoples." Romans genuinely believed, or at least said, that ius gentium reflected what all rational humans would work out — so it had a natural-law tinge. But in practice, ius gentium mostly recognized slavery, which Roman jurists acknowledged was against ius naturale strictly understood. The tension between ius gentium (practical universal practice) and ius naturale (what reason actually requires) was productive — it gave later thinkers conceptual tools to criticize existing practice.For context, you'll see that this is the most commonly used law in Rome, between the Roman elite and other people in the empire. Curious that it is so pro-slavery, no?
>>18436732>Source of law. Civil-law systems center on codes — comprehensive, systematically arranged statutory codifications intended to cover the whole field of a body of law. The French Civil Code, the German BGB, the Italian Codice Civile. A civil-law lawyer starts with the code and works outward. Judicial decisions interpret the code but don't themselves make law, at least in theory. Common-law systems center on judicial decisions — the accumulated holdings of appellate courts over centuries, with statutes playing a role but layered on top of a common-law substrate. A common-law lawyer starts with case law and works outward. Statutes are read against the background of the common law.>Method of reasoning. Civil-law reasoning is deductive: from code provision to specific case. The judge identifies the applicable code article and applies it to the facts. Common-law reasoning is inductive and analogical: the judge looks at previously decided cases with similar facts and reasons from precedent to the present case. Stare decisis — the binding force of precedent — is a common-law institution. Civil-law judges consult prior decisions but aren't formally bound by them in the same way.>Role of judges. Civil-law judges are typically career civil servants — they enter the judiciary directly from law school, work their way up through the ranks, and are understood to be applying the code rather than making law. Common-law judges are typically senior practitioners appointed to the bench after distinguished careers as advocates — in England from the ranks of barristers, in America often from practice or academia. Common-law judges, especially appellate judges, are explicitly recognized as shaping the law through their decisions.Civil Law: coded, deductive, career servant judges.Common Law: interpreted, inductive, elite judges
>>18436739>Procedure. Civil-law procedure is inquisitorial: the judge actively directs the investigation, questions witnesses, and gathers evidence. The judge is a truth-seeker, not a neutral umpire. Common-law procedure is adversarial: the parties and their lawyers develop the case; the judge is a neutral umpire who rules on objections and the jury (when present) finds facts. This is why common-law trials feel so different from civil-law trials — the parties drive everything.>Juries. Juries are a common-law institution, descending from medieval England. Civil-law countries have historically used professional judges for both law and fact, though many have adopted lay participation in criminal cases (French cour d'assises uses lay assessors, for instance).>Style of judgments. Civil-law judgments are often short and formally structured — a recitation of the code article, brief facts, application, conclusion. Common-law judgments, especially appellate ones, are long reasoned essays explicitly engaging with prior cases, discussing the reasoning, and often including concurring and dissenting opinions. This matters because common-law legal development happens in these opinions; the reasoning is the law.Civil Law: inquisitive, lack of jury, formally structured conclusionCommon Law: adversarial, has a jury, judgements read like debate essays
>>18436502how did actual codes adapt to the transformation from status to contract? was this bottom up or top down? did society slowly transform itself from a clan based system to a contract based system or was this change imposed from above?
>>18436762>transformation from status to contractNot sure what this means. I think you're missing a word.>did society slowly transform itself from a clan based system to a contract based system or was this change imposed from above?Among the strongest anti-clan policy that I've heard of is the rules around marriage and inheritance created by the Roman church around ~1000 AD. There's also all the killing they did in Ireland and England, which could be seen as a clan-specific thing because they went after and killed the nobles. This is what St Patrick is credited for.
>There's a famous anecdote preserved in Justinian's Digest (14.2.9). A shipwrecked merchant named Eudaemon of Nicomedia petitioned the Emperor Antoninus (probably Antoninus Pius, mid-2nd century CE) after being pillaged by local authorities. The emperor's response: "I am indeed lord of the world, but the law is lord of the sea. Let it be judged by the Rhodian law, which is prescribed concerning maritime matters, insofar as no Roman law is opposed to it." This is a remarkable statement — the emperor explicitly subordinates Roman imperial authority to established maritime custom for disputes at sea.>The Roman contribution was to integrate maritime law into their systematic civil law framework and to produce the technical doctrines that would survive.
>The English Admiralty Court emerged in the 14th century, initially to handle piracy and prize (captured ships and cargo), then expanding to commercial maritime disputes. It operated under Romano-canonical procedure, applied Rhodian-Roman-civilian substantive law filtered through the Rôles d'Oléron and the Mediterranean codes, and was staffed by civilians — lawyers trained in Roman and canon law at Oxford and Cambridge, organized separately from the common lawyers through Doctors' Commons (the civilian lawyers' association near St. Paul's, dissolved 1865).>So medieval and early modern English admiralty was essentially a Roman-law island in a common-law sea. English sailors suing for wages or English merchants fighting general average claims got Continental procedure and doctrine, not common-law pleadings. This civilian tradition survived repeated attempts by common-law judges (Sir Edward Coke most aggressively, in the early 17th century) to squeeze admiralty jurisdiction down. Coke partly succeeded — he limited admiralty jurisdiction to things happening on the high seas — but the substantive law remained civilian.
Civil war in general:>Venice wasn't the center of the Roman law revival. That honor belongs unambiguously to Bologna. In the late 11th century — around 1070–1088 — a complete manuscript of Justinian's Digest (the "Littera Pisana," later called the Florentine manuscript) resurfaced in Italy, and a scholar named Irnerius began teaching it systematically at Bologna. The University of Bologna, founded around this moment, was essentially a law school. Students from across Europe traveled there: the Glossators (Irnerius, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugo, Jacobus — the "Four Doctors") wrote marginal glosses explaining the text; their successors the Commentators (notably Bartolus of Sassoferrato in the 14th century) built systematic doctrine. Bologna exported Roman law back to the rest of Europe via trained graduates.>Why Bologna and not Venice? Several reasons. Bologna was in the papal orbit but politically neutral enough to be safe for scholars from any faction. It sat at a commercial crossroads with an existing intellectual culture. It had the manuscript. And crucially, Venice didn't want a law school — Venice wanted oligarchic control. The Republic was famously suspicious of intellectual independence. It didn't found a university until 1222, and then at Padua (which Venice controlled), not in Venice itself. Padua became a major center for medical and philosophical study but never rivaled Bologna for civil law.
>>18436778*civil lawMaritime law:>Venice did develop its own distinctive legal tradition — a maritime and commercial law that influenced all of Mediterranean trade. The Capitulare Nauticum (maritime code, 1255), the regulations of the Rialto and the Arsenal, the Venetian law of bills of exchange and marine insurance — this corpus fed into the general lex mercatoria of medieval Europe and shaped commercial practice far beyond the lagoon. Some of the earliest double-entry bookkeeping, joint-venture contracts (the colleganza and commenda), and state-issued long-term debt instruments (the prestiti, from 1262) were Venetian innovations. The Venetians built Roman-descended commercial law into something functionally modern, centuries before anyone else.>So the summary is: Venice preserved a Byzantine-Roman legal strand through the dark centuries when the West lost most of it, then contributed a major body of commercial and maritime law to European practice — but the scholarly recovery and teaching of classical Roman law that reshaped European jurisprudence happened at Bologna, not Venice.
>Category 7: Debt slavery and debt release>Hammurabi §117: If a man's debt compels him to sell his wife, son, or daughter into debt slavery, they serve three years and are freed in the fourth.>Exodus 21:2: A Hebrew slave serves six years and goes free in the seventh.>Deuteronomy 15:12: Same six-year limit, with additional provisions for generous provisioning of the freed slave.>Leviticus 25: The Jubilee year — every 50 years, all Hebrew slaves freed and ancestral land returned to original families.>Twelve Tables: The manus iniectio procedure, with the 30-day grace period, 60-day detention, three market displays, and ultimate slavery abroad or dismemberment.Maybe we shouldn't looked at debt cancellation as a result of kings "being good" but instead the necessary component of running a financial system based on speculation and needing a state sponsor for bailouts?>Your specific framing — that debt cancellation is the necessary companion of a speculative credit system with state backing — is actually sharper than the standard literature usually puts it, and I think it's right. Let me push on it.>Ancient Mesopotamian credit wasn't just subsistence lending to farmers. A significant portion was commercial and speculative: loans to merchants for caravan trade, loans for investments in workshops, partnership capital (the tappûtum partnership is attested), and increasingly sophisticated instruments over time. Temples and palaces were major lenders, but so were private merchant families who ran what were essentially early banking houses. The Assyrian merchant colony at Kanesh in Anatolia (c. 1950–1750 BCE) has left us tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets documenting a sophisticated long-distance credit network with partnerships, bills of exchange, interest calculations, and risk-sharing arrangements.
>>18436722>livery companiesSome of their mottoes are kinohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mottos_and_halls_of_the_livery_companiesWorshipful Company of Bowyers>Crécy, Poitiers, AgincourtWorshipful Company of Gardeners>In The Sweat Of Thy Brows Shalt Thou Eate Thy BreadWorshipful Company of Shipwrights>Within the Ark Safe ForeverIt's a shame that only one, the Worshipful Company of Cutlers, retains an Anglo-Norman French motto>Pour Parvenir A Bonne Foy'To succeed through good faith'
I wasn't aware that civil law was so much more essential to elite practice. I suppose civil law covers business proceedings, which would be the main subject of anyone doing business.However, I suppose it's still worth noting that the maritime law seems to sneak in under this heading. I don't think that means maritime law is inherently evil or something though.>Former Wall Street attorney John Oller, author of White Shoe, credits Paul Drennan Cravath with creating the distinct model adopted by virtually all white-shoe law firms, the Cravath System, just after the turn of the 20th century, about 50 years before the phrase white-shoe firm came into use.>Scope of the practice>Cravath handled predominantly civil law matters in the early years; the majority of firms adopting this system are also civil law firms.
>>18436771>Let it be judged by the Rhodian law, which is prescribed concerning maritime matters, insofar as no Roman law is opposed to it.Maybe it’s just a bad translation but this statement pretty clearly subordinates Rhodian maritime law to Roman law in actual practice even if the first part of the quote is where the emperor in a theoretical sense subordinates himself to the law at sea.
>>18437391You can make legal claims without fully being able to support or enforce them.
>>18436778>It didn't found a university until 1222, and then at Padua (which Venice controlled), not in Venice itself.This is straight up wrong. Padua didn't come under venetian control until 1405, almost 200 years after the university was founded.A university that, worth mentioning, was explicitely founded for the sake of intellectual freedom, by bolognese students who fled from suppression. To this day UNIPD's motto is "universa universis patavina libertas". Venice didn't really give a fuck about suppressing them after it took over Padua (never bothered defending them from religious ingerence either though) and it made massive use of the institution by sending there the vast majority of its nobility to study over the centuries. Given how close the two cities are, it's no wonder Venice didn't see the point in having its own university until the 19th century.That said, it's true that Venice didn't appreciate the idea of people trying to argue roman law before venetian law in its courts. Perfectly reasonable attitude imo.
>>18437431I mean that the wording directly states that Roman law is supreme over Rhodian and Rhodian law can only act where it supplements Roman law or where Roman law is silent, a little like how state law is subordinated to federal law via the supremacy clause in America.
>>18436771Maybe I’m being anally retentive, but it matters for legal history.>This is a remarkable statement — the emperor explicitly subordinates Roman imperial authority to established maritime custom for disputes at sea.Seems to be an almost baffling misreading of the preceding quote because he takes the aspirational/idealistic statement of the emperor that the law is “lord of the sea” and runs with it, totally ignoring the operative phrasing that follows, which explicitly states that Roman law reigns supreme.
