Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

INIURIA AND THE COMMON LAW. Eds Eric Descheemaeker and Helen Scott Oxford and Portland: Hart Publishing (www.hartpub.co.uk), 2013. xxxii + 244 pp. ISBN 9781849465038. £50.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
DOI10.3366/elr.2015.0262
Pages152-153
Date01 January 2015
Published date01 January 2015
AuthorGeoffrey MacCormack

There were two delicts (torts) in Roman law dealing with “damage”, each providing a remedy in damages, whether compensatory or penal. One, entitled damnum iniuria datum, established by the lex Aquilia, traditionally enacted in 287 BCE, dealt with damage to property, including slaves, inflicted deliberately or through fault. The other delict, iniuria, originating in the Twelve Tables in the middle of the fifth century BCE, dealt with the deliberate infliction of physical injury on a free person or the subjection of such a person to insulting or contemptuous behaviour, the latter aspect being by far the more important in the developed classical law.

The delict of damnum iniuria datum has received far more coverage in English language treatments of Roman law than iniuria. This imbalance is to some extent corrected by the present admirable volume which contains eleven excellent essays arising from contributions made to a conference on “Iniuria and the common law” held in Oxford in September 2011. The essays, taken collectively, not only offer an extended analysis of the Roman delict itself, but show what its fate has been, or perhaps should have been, in two legal systems derived from Roman law (Scots law and South African law) and in one not so derived (the English Common law).

The book makes two quite distinct contributions to our understanding of the Roman delict. On the one hand, the essays provide a thorough account of the history of iniuria itself from its somewhat enigmatic occurrence in the Twelve Tables to the crystallisation of its component parts by the late classical jurist Ulpian. This account provides the most up to date and probably the best treatment in English of iniuria. It is perhaps worth remarking that the contributors have tended perhaps to rely rather too heavily on the two or three articles touching on iniuria written by the late Peter Birks, with a comparative neglect of the rich continental literature in Italian and German.

The other significant contribution is the discussion of the relation of the Roman delict to the three...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT