Legal Artifices: Ten Essays on Roman Law in the Present Tense: Ten Essays on Roman Law in the Present Tense

Yan Thomas

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2021

Legal Artifices: Ten Essays on Roman Law in the Present Tense

Ten Essays on Roman Law in the Present Tense

Yan Thomas

In the series Encounters in Law & Philosophy

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474446693

Overview
Contents

About this book

The first English-language anthology of Yan Thomas, whose contributions to Roman law revolutionised legal scholarship

Collects and translates 10 essays by Yan Thomas (1943–2008), the most renowned French jurist of the 20th century
Provides a juridical perspective on the genealogy of the Western subject and the elementary conditions for the exercise of power
Builds on the growing interest in Thomas’ work generated by recent engagements, such as in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series
Demonstrates the formal continuity of socio-legal techniques that have defined Western legal culture

Western legal professionals habitually rely on a version of legal history that bolsters their own sway over the present. The legal mythologies undergirding these self-serving proposals are divided between doctrines of law’s immemorial nature, and of its sacred (Roman) origins. Thomas’s de-mythicised jurisprudence, presented in this collection of essays, dismisses these sagas. His work sent seismic waves across the humanities and social sciences, with claims including:

Law is not a set of rules, but the operation of legal arguments; lawyers are the agents of the legal denaturalisation of the world
Rome is misread as an essentially political entity; the effect exercised on Roman society by its jurists ranks before that of its politicians
Despite a widely accepted opposition between modern labour law and the Roman renting-out of a slave's workforce, there exist unexpected commonalities
‘Legal order’ and ‘responsibility’ are among the inventions of modern law; they are not part of the timeless inventory of the world

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Copyright Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
List of Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Foreword – Operations and Artifices: The Art of the Oldest Legal Professionals Anton Schütz and Thanos Zartaloudis Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1. The Contrivances of Legal Institutions: Studies in Roman Law Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Legal History for Historians: A Presentation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
3. The Language of Roman Law: Problems and Methods Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
4. The Law between Words and Things: Rhetoric and Case Law in Rome Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	48
5. Artifices of Truth in the Medieval ius commune Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
6. The Subject of Right, the Person, Nature: Remarks on the Current Criticism of the Legal Subject Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
7. Vitae Necisque Potestas: The Father, the State, Death Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
8. On Parricide: Political Interdiction and the Institution of the Subject Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
9. Act, Agent, Society: Fault and Guilt in Roman Legal Thinking Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
10. The Slave’s Body and its Work in Rome: On Analysing a Juridical Dissociation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	274
Afterword – A Knowledge Apart Alain Pottage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Biographies of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	317

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 360
Keywords: Law

eBook

Published: March 2, 2022
ISBN: 9781474446693