Have I heard of Roman Law?

Abstract

Henri Lévy Brühl was the father of the French legal anthropology. From a still evolutionary perspective, he thought that the ancient Roman Law could be enlightened by legal ethnology. Later, Jean Gaudemet also compared Roman Law and Malagasy customs, seeing a mysterious relationship between them. I belong to the generation of Aix students who received the last lessons in Roman Law, assured by Jean Macqueron, Lionel Ménager and Gérard Boulvert. I myself drafted a thesis of Roman Law and taught it briefly and very badly, as if it was positive law. If it were to be done again, I should focus on modern problems: slavery (still in force in certain regions), the status of women and foreigners, agrarian reforms, and so on. The study of roman law has often been justified by its role as a trainer for lawyers of positive law. I doubt about this argument. On the one hand, tax law, banking law, administrative law or that of inheritance may well also form the legal spirit. On the other hand, whole sections of Roman law have sunk in the past: slavery, family law (apart from consensualism and marriage in one act), penal law, procedure and so on. There remain the law of obligations and adages. It’s not nothing, but is it enough? Our time seems already to have answered it negatively.