This volume contains a collection of essays presented at a conference organised by the Edinburgh Roman Law Group in 2005. As indicated in the preface, the theme is “law and society”. The aim is to address two recurring questions on this topic: first, whether law is a product of the society that produces it, and second, whether a close relationship exists between law and society. The volume is divided into six sections.
In the introductory section, “Debates and Contexts”, the editors link their theme to John Crook's book, Law and Life of Rome, published in 1967. In his book Crook attempts to bridge the divide between Roman law and Roman social and economic life by focusing on Roman law in its social context. He emphasises the need for an interdisciplinary approach, a collaboration between scholars of Roman law, legal history, ancient history, and classics. His work, however, has had a limited influence on Roman law scholars. Beyond Dogmatics is intended as a new call to the Crookian approach and poses a break with the so-called German dogmatic tradition. In adherence to its aim it contains contributions by scholars of various disciplines on certain specific areas of law.
The editorial introduction is followed by a provocative chapter of Alan Watson in which he seems to hold a very different view from Crook. The thrust of his argument comes from his book Legal Transplants, published in 1974, and is that there is no necessary correlation between law and society; that law is very much the culture of lawmakers; that once created law can live in very different circumstances; that law, therefore, transplants easily to very different societies; that legal tradition dies hard and that lawyers are inward-looking and not interested in explaining why and when particular rules were introduced.
Not all Watson's examples in support of his arguments are equally persuasive. For instance, he mentions that “Justinian's empire was a hotbed of debate on Christian theology” (29) but remarks that there is nevertheless no mention of Christianity in either the Digestor the Institutes and only some in the Codex. However, one should bear in mind that Justinian started his codification programme with the codification of imperial legislation in the Codex (vetus and later repetitae praelectionis) in which the first thirteen titles of book one are dedicated to church matters. Secondly, although the Digest is a compilation of the works of pagan jurists of the classical period (as Watson mentions), the introductory and promulgatory legislation to both the Digest and the Institutesdedicates them to God and proclaims God to be the inspiration behind and indeed the author of these two codifications (Constitutiones Deo Auctore and Tanta; Prooemium to the Institutes). Justinian's whole codification is embedded in a very definite Christian setting.
The contributions in the rest of the volume are in essence...
