omparative European Legal History: Roman Law and the Ius commune

 Final Examination

  Due date: The final day that the essay may to submitted:  May 10, 2008;  please remember that the School of Canon Law frowns on incompletes.  If you need an incomplete please talk with the Dean.

 

1. Gratian was a teacher.  Discuss his approach to the teaching of law.  Gratian was also concerned to teach the jurisprudence of law.  He defined law at the beginning of his Decretum and introduced the idea that there was a hierarchy of laws.  He also defined natural law, custom, and declared that all law must have the consent of those whom the law governs.  Discuss the importance of Gratian's Tractatus de legibus for the development of the jurisprudence of law.

2.  Roman law begins to shape European jurisprudence in the early twelfth century. Discuss the use of Roman law in Gratian, the first royal compilation of law, King Roger II's Constitutiones, and Bulgarus' treatise on procedure, De arbitris.  Much later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Roman law provided a model for European legal codes.  Discuss the similarities and differences between ancient, medieval, and modern codes.

  3. The modes of proof in European courtrooms took two different paths after 1100. As ordeals became more suspect and then obsolete after 1215, one path followed the procedure of Romano-canonical procedure, the Ordo iudiciarius that was based on procedural principles found in Roman law.   The Ordo developed an accusatorial and an inquisitorial mode of proof.  Discuss each.    England developed modes of proofs based on Germanic conceptions and practices. Discuss briefly the reasons why two different systems of proof evolved in European legal systems.

4. Discuss how jurists in the medieval and early modern periods created legal norms and principles from the jurisprudence of Roman law.  Many of these principles and norms favored individual rights but also emphasized individual duties.  Discuss their thought and its development.  Give at least four examples of the norms that they created and the rights and duties that these norms justified and protected.

 

Write an essay covering each of these points. It should be typed, double-spaced, and proofread. The font should be 12 point, the margins 1" left and right, top and bottom. Please number pages (in case of an accident!).  Insert the number of each question in your essay when you being to discuss that part (so I am clear where you are).

I will evaluate your essay on how well you integrate the material on the web and the class lectures with the readings (for this essay Bellomo chapters  3, 4, 5, 6,  Stein, chapter 4, and my essays on the class web page).  The main point to remember when writing this essay is that none of the questions has any "hidden" or "trick" elements to them.  I want you to write an analytic, thoughtful essay on the material presented in the course.  For that reason, if you have any questions about exactly what I want you to write about in the essay, please ask.  I'll tell you!

You can submit your paper by email (I would prefer that you do).  It should be a DOS document in Word or WordPerfect.  If you are a Mac person and if you know that I cannot read your files, please submit a paper copy of your essay to me.  

Please label your file with your name, last first, first last, e.g. PenningtonKen.doc I will make my comments in the electronic document.