Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ROMAN LAW AND THE LEGAL WORLD OF THE ROMANS
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Roman History – The Brief Version
- 3 Sources of Roman Law
- 4 Sources for Roman Law
- 5 The Legal Professions
- 6 Legal Education
- 7 Social Control
- 8 Legal (In)equality
- 9 Writing and the Law
- 10 Status
- 11 Civil Procedure
- 12 Contracts
- 13 Ownership and Possession
- 14 Other Rights over Property
- 15 Inheritance
- 16 Women and Property
- 17 Family Law
- 18 Delict
- 19 Crimes and Punishments
- 20 Religious Law
- 21 Law in the Provinces
- 22 Conclusion
- Documents
- Glossary
- Further Reading
- Index
21 - Law in the Provinces
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ROMAN LAW AND THE LEGAL WORLD OF THE ROMANS
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Roman History – The Brief Version
- 3 Sources of Roman Law
- 4 Sources for Roman Law
- 5 The Legal Professions
- 6 Legal Education
- 7 Social Control
- 8 Legal (In)equality
- 9 Writing and the Law
- 10 Status
- 11 Civil Procedure
- 12 Contracts
- 13 Ownership and Possession
- 14 Other Rights over Property
- 15 Inheritance
- 16 Women and Property
- 17 Family Law
- 18 Delict
- 19 Crimes and Punishments
- 20 Religious Law
- 21 Law in the Provinces
- 22 Conclusion
- Documents
- Glossary
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Most of this book has assumed that the persons involved in its situations were Romans living in Rome (or perhaps their slaves). Roman law, however, was fairly sensitive both to the citizenship of individuals and to the location of a given legal dispute. (Since one's birth citizenship rarely changed, citizenship and location often do not line up.) Thus we need to think at least a little about several other situations: Romans interacting with each other abroad, Romans and aliens interacting (both in Rome and elsewhere), and two non-Romans interacting within an area of Roman rule.
CITIZENSHIP AND JURISDICTION
The central principle is what we today call the “personality principle.” That is, the law that governs you depends more on who you are than on where you are. Consider, for instance, an Athenian or Jewish couple living in Rome but without Roman citizenship. Were they legally married? What rights did they have against each other or any children? What happened to the property when one or the other died? The Roman law rules discussed earlier (Chapters 15 and 16) did not apply. Rather, the Romans left this up to Greek and Jewish law, respectively, to decide. (If there was no nearby court to decide these issues conveniently, that was not the Romans' problem.) Of course, there were exceptions to this principle, and these will be discussed later, but it is important to begin with one clarification. Limited jurisdiction is a legal concept, not a political one.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans , pp. 215 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010