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In this book, Alan Watson argues that the slave laws of North and South America--the written codes defining the relationship of masters to slaves--reflect not so much the culture and society of the various colonies but the legal traditions of England, Europe, and ancient Rome.

A pathbreaking study concerned as much with the nature of comparative law as the specific subject of the law of slavery, "Slave Law in the Americas" posits an essential distance in the Western legal tradition between the tenets of law and the values of the society they govern. Laws, Watson shows, often are made not...

Written by one of our most respected legal historians, this book analyzes the interaction of law and religion in ancient Rome. As such, it offers a major new perspective on the nature and development of Roman law in the early republic and empire before Christianity was recognized and encouraged by Constantine.

At the heart of the book is the apparent paradox that Roman private law is remarkably secular even though, until the late second century B.C., the Romans were regarded (and regarded themselves) as the most religious people in the world. Adding to the paradox was the fact that the...

In this masterful choreography of legal philosophy, legal history, and comparative law, Alan Watson draws from ancient Roman, English, and French law to assess how lawmakers fail to envision ways to provide society with laws geared toward precise political or social goals.

To understand how law develops and how legal rules and structures relate to society, one must examine the issues both comparatively and historically, Alan Watson asserts. And in the Western world, he adds, in order to understand law comparatively, one must have knowledge of Roman law.

As his title suggests, Watson has divided the book into two related but independent parts. The first part, a revised and enlarged version of his 1970 volume The Law of the Ancient Romans, provides a comprehensive description of the system of Roman law. Watson begins with a discussion of law and...

When Justinian became sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 527, he ordered the preparation of three compilations of Roman law that together formed the Corpus Juris Civilis. These works have become known individually as the "Code," which collected the legal pronouncements of the Roman emperors, the "Institutes," an elementary student's textbook, and the "Digest," by far the largest and most highly prized of the three compilations. The "Digest" was assembled by a team of sixteen academic lawyers commissioned by Justinian in 533 to cull everything of value from earlier Roman law. It was...

In "Ancient Law and Modern Understanding" Alan Watson proposes that ancient law is relevant and important for understanding history, theology, sociology, and literature. "Law, though technical," he writes, "is not remote from scholarship on other matters, and law is a central element in society."

From Homeric Greece to present-day Armenia, Watson examines law's influence. Without a sensitivity to technical legal language, scholars of literature or history miss much: the use of puns in Plautus, Sulla's claim that Julius Caesar was descended from a slave, the relationship between the...

When Justinian became sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 527, he ordered the preparation of three compilations of Roman law that together formed the Corpus Juris Civilis. These works have become known individually as the "Code," which collected the legal pronouncements of the Roman emperors, the "Institutes," an elementary student's textbook, and the "Digest," by far the largest and most highly prized of the three compilations. The "Digest" was assembled by a team of sixteen academic lawyers commissioned by Justinian in 533 to cull everything of value from earlier Roman law. It was...