The Spirit of Roman Law

this is a production of Cornell University it's a very great pleasure to present to you Professor Dr OK Barons of the University of giringan in Germany he is one of the great Scholars of the Roman law today perhaps the greatest in Europe and it is indeed a privilege of this University to have him with us as an Andrew Dixon white professor at large at Cornell University a very high honor bestowed upon only those who are so worthy of such high honor Professor Barons it's a great pleasure to have my students be with you thank you and for me to be with you thank you thank you oh I'm very grateful for these very kind words and for this kind reception and of course I must say also for this longstanding and very inspiring friendship I had with Professor Summers it what I told you that my life would have been much poorer without this equ ship and we had a common interest into form the form of the law what is the form of the law and my current speech the spirit of the Roman law has an affinity to this question because if you are in a good form then you have the right spirit and if a law has the right Spirit then the form of the law is excellent and I dare say that the Roman law has a good form but the law I will uh mention it at the end has a good form too so I will start my lecture relying on my text and on my very German English you must be careful to understand me otherwise you will misunderstand my bad pronunciation treating the spirit of the ROM law today confronts us with two different questions the first is historical it will constitute our main theme what makes up its Spirit explaining its enormous success in ancient and modern times the next confronts us with another fact and has to be dealt with at first Roman law has lost in the Judgment of many jurists its role as a vivifying fountain and true source of European legal culture as a great provider of legal Notions or to put it suly as a creator of the universal grammar of Law and politics and a treasure house for intellectual experience that nobody can visit without feeling enriched and stimulated in her or his own actual judgment how can the devaluation of one of the greatest spiritual Assets in the heritage of humankind be understood especially today where we are looking for intellectual help in front of the partially problematic Tendencies of our time those that carry with them the risk that the central scope of law to enable secure and free individual and fruitful lives in secure and sustained private forms is sacrificed to the unmitigated tyranny of global economic efficiency I will limit myself to a brief answer Roman law although still taught all over the world has lost its intellectual Prestige as a central contribution to the world's culture not because of the work of jealous Outsiders jealous Outsiders there are some today but they can not be regarded as serious but because of what I would like to call a historical betrayal of its Spirit by the romanist that is the professors of Roman law themselves this betrayal was perpetrated by a misinterpretation that had tied the Roman law to the spirit of a certain historical period to a bygone period in which the idea of the closed national state and its potential Imperial yearning dominated the intellectual scene thereby destroying the very idea of continuity of The Human Condition on which the tradition of Roman law and of law in general is based the RO Roman law was then still in immediate Vigor as civil law you know it it was then adapted to the demands of the modern self-sufficient Sovereign and latly revolutionary national state that defined itself as the unique source of law Mak making thereby law subservient to every purpose defined by the political power law was in the last re thought conceived of as a form that sanctions power-based relationships provided they were established in a way compatible with the rules accepted by the r the method applied for this adjustment was an adapting interpretation it was declared that Roman law was like modern law based on decisions that gave sanctions to accepted relationships of power as such as was emanating not only from the institutional organs of the state but in the Roman case even in the first line from the lawyers who were defined when deciding how a conflict a conflict between individual assertions had to be decided as the embodiment of the people's will with the help of this interpretation Roman law was made compatible with the fundamental idea of the modern state that law is and has to be always has to be always the emanation of the will of the state representing the interest of the individual PE people and its members in the concrete historical situation in the cases and problematic situation that arise and can therefore essentially be reduced in the last resort to nothing else than commands requiring obedience this is the modern command or will theory of law this approach has comple that has complex roots in the history of modern mind destroyed the fundamental ideas of spiritual objectivity and with it the possibility of ideas creating and sustaining an objective order lasting in time possibility that creates tradition and thereby something on which all successful Constitutions are based Hannah arand you know her has shown in some very striking essays uh writing in relation to your law and the Roman examples she has shown the importance that the founding ideas have for a constitutional order the as a fundamental layers that persist and from which in renewal that adjusts to change changing circumstances is always possible studying the Roman case she realized in this respect the central importance of the concept of authority Latin aoras Authority it is in effect a highly specific Roman term with roots going back to the very beginning the Greeks declared the word authority authoritas to be untranslatable but all modern languages have successfully adopted it as a word that connotes a power not based on for and arbitrary and discretion but on something that compels obedience because it represents and affirms the objective value of an order traditionally accepted and approved by reason the Romans to whom we owe the notion of authority will tell us that their autoritas was in fact derived from the experience of their successful founding it was not rooted in subjective will nor in any military power but in the representation of an order resented as fundamental and good by a long-standing experience the misinterpretation that reduced the source of Roman law to decision making still prevails and is the main reason why Roman law is currently absent in the great intellectual debate concerning the fundamentals of Law and is by no means today used in line with its intellectual potentialities Roman law is definitely marginalized in the debate of how a globalized world should be organized and this although it is the only law that has been formed by the experience of giving a common law to what in Antiquity was regarded as mankind the inhabitants of the mediteranian Basin living living mainly in city states of different languages and cultures and uh Traditions behind this negative attitude today there is a doubtful question that we can understand when we look on the modern development I described that is the final victory of the command the of theory of of of law the doubtful question uh is what can one learn from decision making serving the necessities of a time so far away from ours it is therefore quite understandable when leading Italian romanist like Mario brona and Aldo kavona are convinced that there is no continuity no continuity between modern and ancient law the later Aldos scaron has published a book with the telling title Loria spata which means his history divided and sounds in the English translation published soon afterwards still more provocative the end of the past the end of the past when the past has ended then All That Remains is a present the present time is left alone what happened in the past does no longer help I disagree because in all fundamental relationships of the law the human The Human Condition has not changed it is true that there is a continuously a continuous movement in the right appraisal of Social and individual values that influence influence the law but changes brought about by this movement are in the P perspective of legal history rather a new balancing of the maintained social order than a sequence of Destruction and rebuilding we turn now to Antiquity to the Roman law in its own time a period that endured more than thousand more than a thousand years far longer than modernity whether we count it from the discovery of the new world your world or as many do today from the French Revolution we find it in its Center a persisting and enduring idea that conceives of law essentially as a system of peaceful social relationships existing between equal human persons in a definite legal form it was the great author of D de mon on the spirit of law who introduced the felicitous term legal relationship rort jic through Savin the founder of the historical School of Law it it is now everywhere accepted in professional language legal relationship it defines law as a life as life seen under a certain angle that is of a social system of free members ordered by legally acknowledged and formalized relations both authors Mon and Savin converged in combining this view of the law with the Constitutional ideal of the Republic mon by showing that the Republic is the only constitution based on morals and virtue and not as the others on fear and ambition Savi by declaring that the Romans developed their particular realistic view on the Phenom phenomenon of law in the nearly 500 years of their Republic the concept of legal relation opens up in fact to its entire fertility when we complement it with two pairs of Concepts these concepts are imports from Greece due to the helenistic period that began in the 3D Century before Christ and was character characterized by the reception of fundamental constitutional ideas of Greek philosophy into the Roman law a reception that was enormously enriching and new several waves but did not break with the founding ideas of Roman law as we will see in due course the first pair is public law private law publicum use use pratum the second pair is civil law and law of all Nations both key Notions for the understanding of the spirit of the Roman law the PA private Law Public Law establishes the fact that the Roman law is essentially a republican order where private law is protected by magistrate choosen by the people and developed by statutes enacted by the people the connection between private and public law is in the Roman tradition essential it contains a lesson they learned from their own history that only a republic can protect the freedom of the individual since only in a republic the personal in the Personnel in power is chosen and controlled by those interested in the security of their freedom and property where these differences disappear there is the imminent danger of tyranny and hence forward abolition of Freedom since a tyrant thinks himself as a sovereign lord of the bodies and fortunes of everyone this conviction runs very deep in the Roman conscience and is nourished in several episodes of their canonized history the best known being the one that led to the expulsion of the Kings because the last in the row of good and law-abiding monarchs revealed himself as a terrible Tyrant from that year onwards traditionally 500 and 10 kingship was identified with tyranny and the attempt to reintroduce monarchy was execrated as a grave gravest possible crime Caesar great Caesar openly showing his disdain for the Republic and aspiring to the diadem of anistic King was killed by bhos and kasos as a wouldbe tyrant Augustus his son by adoption learned this lesson and was therefore very careful when nevertheless introducing a monarchy to do it with a carefully elaborated program of the restitution of the Republic the core idea with which Augustus convinced his time and post posterity was in fact the Constitutional idea of a Resa restituta restitution of the Republic it was never AB abandoned not even by the autocrats like Constantine who admitted Christianity as a permitted and listed religion and Justinian who codified the Roman law and he did Justin codified the Roman law as a creation due to the inspiring work of the Holy Spirit both Emperors saw themselves as rulers of a race racea therefore it is not due to Mere tradition that the Corpus Urus the body of law enacted by Justinian opens up in his first titles with a pair youth publicum use pratum described as a necessary aspect of every legal order this is of course the maintained tradition of the Roman Republic this means I repeat that the ideal of the Republic literally the common object or common wealth was never abandoned even when it was well hidden well hidden for the public eye by the overwhelming might of an emperor who studied the codification seriously was necessarily led to the conviction that the legal order was something entrusted to the emperor and not created by his will when in the 12th century the medieval Emperor asked the professor of the University of Bologna whether every right originates from his Imperial will or whether fundamental rights arise from the consensus the consent of the people as in those days as LED in the mun municipalities of Italy he got from a courageous colleague the right answer and a good pun to go with for when a more subservient Professor affirmed that all that affirmed The Sovereign right of the emperor and was donated with a horse he commented it with the words haret aam that known haret aam haret aam that known habit aquum is what a good pun because horse eus and ride eus were pronounced and written in those days in the same way in this tradition Savi the founder of the historical school I mentioned already still living in the medeor evil empire in the last days of the medeor evil empire but like his contemporary G in is in the free city of Frankfurt wrote in his trees the system the syst of today's Roman law he wrote I quote a state comes into existence originally and naturally in a people by a people and for a people a formula that will resonate with you because it was taken up some decades later by Lincoln most powerfully in his solemn wish that government of the People by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth it is the P perspective uh of quintessentially Republican uh character in the background there's always a necessary relationship between use publicum and use pratum that is of a Nation organized by a constitution able to organize a public power that presupposes a free Society because administered by the representatives of those interested in the maintainance of their legal relations in the time I have classified as a period of the Betrayal of the Roman law the pair public and private law was disliked the very idea of private law ran against the then dominant romantic desire of a homogeneous nation that wanted all their members taken and inspired by the same volun general you know this famous notion of Russo the pair the pair useum use pratum suffered in this perspective from the fact that the objective private expressed the concept that the freedom from political and social constraints is something created in the sphere of the individual itself and not as some Modern Theory think granted by the Constitution in fact the name the term private privatus made this point for the eldest Greek legal theory that appeared in Rome at the beginning of the third Century private was something cut out of what before was public and common in a mythical Golden Age all was publica possessio common possession with the culture of the city state came the privata possessio private possession that divided the world into city states and private property and replaced common possession of all Goods by natural law that from now on made the uh it replaced common possession of all Goods by natural law by a new system by a private uh system in city states the younger helenistic theory of skeptical origin was still more radical in their view all private interest were rooted in what human beings brought with them when founding a state seeking for it better protection for better protection for Freedom possession and the basic relationships in family life for both Theory it is characteristic that the acknowledgement of private law does not require citizenship in the state where protection is required because in both theories the root is universal in the first time the root is in a natural law which were presupposed in the Golden Age and the other it is uh based in the nature of every human being the second pair civil law and law of all Nations explains why the protection of private law does not require citizenship it explains it by the way that in the period of when mankind organized in different states the rights given by private law are essentially derived not from citizenship but from membership in the human society this is a common conviction of both helenistic theories every state on Earth is created by the same Universal Tendencies valid For All Mankind and serves therefore necessarily two purposes one purpose is the protection of the special rights of the citizens the other purpose is the obligation to offer a place for every human being that happens to be on the territory of this uh individual states and the obligation to protect its freedom and its property both theories justifies this conviction in a slightly different way I hinted to this fact already the Elder declared that the spiritual force that urge everywhere humankind to the founding of individual states and thereby breaking up the Elder formations of tribes United by the same language as in Old Times the Greeks the Latins the Phoenicians that in each single state to different legal orders but nevertheless states that are created by the same Universal and rational urge IM emerging in this period everywhere therefore legal interpretation can find in the letter of the individual civil law Universal principle animating it and isolate them in a way that can be applied in favor of everyone the universal law found out by interpretation was the you civil that the civil law that required validity everywhere the law of civiliz civilized mankind the profound relationship between civil law and Universal Urban civilization has its origin here the younger Theory discarded the idea of a universal law inherent in all the different legal systems and substituted it with the idea of a set of General institutes that emerge in a way discernable for R for human reason the moment the threshold of civilization is passed these Institute served to protect the biological attributions that permitted life before statehood like Freedom possession and family relations and very refined by ethical values of natural equity uh equally discoverable in Civilization and sanctioned by the magesan Augustus when realizing his program of restituting the Republic preserved both helenistic theories sustaining the universal idea of Republic and left it in a decision of exemplary wisdom to Scientific development of the both of both of these Traditions to the of the Elder and the Young to work out which of the approaches was a Sounder one gustus after having restored the Republic assumed the charge to maintain what he had restored sustained by an extraordinary power that stood above and outside the Republic it was partly military by assuming the heritage of Caesar he became and remained the commander and chief of all armed forces in the Empire but in its constitutional Center it gots its legitimacy from the extraordinary power that the name Augustus conveyed a norm a name formerly given to him by the Senate but selected by him with care and a profound understanding of Roman legal history it is an augural name linked with the eldest layer of Roman religion the religion of the ogos the ogor it gave legitimacy and spiritual security to the founding of Rome it did not confer power to command but power to interpret and is caught in its Essence by the central word we know already Authority auctoritas the name Augustus and the quality auctoritas are in fact two size of the same coin Augustus shows the more religious part octus the more theoretical part or side of the medal the term the term auctoritas is explained by Augustus himself referring to the Republic he had restored Augustus said in a famous inscription initially present in the entire Empire that within this renewed Republic he was a citizen like the others and therefore when chosen to a charge held no power no more power than his colleagues but that he excelled by all by his supreme authority in Latin he said auor omnius prty that means I excel all others by my authority this Octor the expression of what the title Augustus meant in legal context reveals a form of legitim y of great refinement we can understand it only when we remember that Augustus had great counselers and especially one of outstanding intellectual qualities when Octavian this was the former name of Augustus as the amazing at the amazingly young age of 19 dared to claim the political succession of his killed adopted father Caesar by leving troops with no other legitimacy than his being the son of ca he had come in close contact to cisero in those days the great Elder Statesmen who incarnated the Republic tradition affirms that the murderers of Caesar when brandishing their bloody dgar exclaimed his name cisero was nevertheless the born Mentor for the future Augustus because he had in his later writings especially in his book on the Republic the Republica and on the laws Deus promoted the idea that a republic can be in need of an exceptional and inspired leader so he prepared the ground for the belief that the appearance of such that the appearance of such a supreme personality be possible and he did so with arguments borrowed from plon he hailed in famous speeches the young heir of Caesar as a Divine youth who the gods had sent to the rescue of the Roman Republic and endowed with the spiritual potential to do so because gifted with special insight into the rightful order of things that platonic thinking Accords to exceptional historical figures Augustus had learned this lesson and had acted accordingly not only restoring the constitution of the Republic but organizing the lawyers professional freedom freedom to develop the law of the Republic in a way that they could do it henceforth in the name of his authority was the attraction of this famous Institute of giving advice in the name of the emperor in the name of the authority of the princeps but he never interfered intellectually it was only a form a spiritual form it was a logical consequence of his extraordinary Spiritual Authority he who had restored the Republic and remained the Supreme supervising Authority was necessarily also the Supreme source of all legal development even of that he had laid trustingly in the professional hands of the lawyers in this way it could as said very he could as I said already very wisely tolerate the competition of two law schools the content of the name Augustus compared with the term auctoritas is still more powerful rooted in the eldest most uring and most successful stratum of the Roman religion it went back to the first still still pre-urban settlements it stressed the idea of the restitution of the republic since a republic of free citizen can be seen as an enlarged form of an elder settlement of a settlement of free settlers and this was the case in Rome in fact the name Augustus characterized the person who bore it as someone Chosen and blessed by Jupiter the supreme god of the augural religion and therefore capable of giving the same blessing to The Republic he sustained and governed and the same blessing that was given to the agricultural settle settlements of the beginning Augustus had before accepting this name rejected the name of Romulus that would have evoked the founding of the city under the orices of Jupiter by the first king of Rome he preferred the more abstract name of Augustus that avoided the reference to a full-fledged monarchy and called forth the idea of a blessed founding and refounding in a still more charismatic way it might have been again cisero who communicated to the young Augustus you must say 19 years at the beginning this Central concept of legitimacy for CIS was when he met him not only an experienced member of the augural college but had also cleared in his constitutional draft the labors on the laws the central role of this uh College of priest introducing the public Aur as interprets of the highest God of Jupiter the best and richest interpretes yis optimi maumi the concept of interpreting Jupiter the god of the clear guy gives us the decisive clue for in fact the eldest founding in Rome that Augustus renewed was done in a way that interpreted Jupiter the God of Light and order the god of the clear sky to understand it we must now take a brief look on the beginning of the Roman legal order it is a look partly on what we nowadays can reconstruct with modern methods partly on what we see in the memory of the Romans themselves to the letter belongs the fact that when the Romans be with the beginning of the helenistic period had to translate the Greek word for Universal or natural law they did not choose natural law use naturalis but use gum referring to the fact that the eldest settlements in the plain of leum laum called gtis represented in hindsight what in the Greek theory was called the Golden Age The Period of the happy beginnings of Human Social Life those GES were independent villages on the plane of laum today it's Lao united through common language and common cult about 20 of them formed a union that created the foundation of the eldest patrici Patrician Rome by transposing the original idea of the Gans to the new entity formed by the union of the 20 gantes where in Greece we have the phenomenon megalopolis megalopolis a polus formed by the fusion of several po we have in the eldest constitutional layer of Rome a magag a big SK formed by the fusion of many of them the result was that Rome could continue to regard herself as an agricult agricultural settlement that could serve for its colonies small fortified agricultural settlements not withstanding the set differences of size as a model in Germany cologne is still a remnant of such a founding of the Roman colonizing uh Enterprise the leading Concepts that ordered this model and in which Aur religion law was not yet divided was a specific answer to the challenge of the socalled Neolithic Revolution the beginning of sedentary agriculture which introduced a new period in human history the leading idea of this religion was that the supreme god of the sky Jupiter the best and richest Jupiter Optimus Maximus was in favor of the Agricultural Revolution the so-called Neolithic Revolution which was to change the face of the world so drastically the God would help to do it under the condition that the new beginning was put under his authority that required that the new image he would be offered by the agricultural settlement did respect the principles of clarity and order that the Supreme Divinity of the sky represented this was realized by projecting the celestial order into The Human Condition technically primary by a territory measured out for agricultural agriculture according to a scheme that reflected at the same time the apparent movement of the sky at the rectitude of the radiation of light creating thereby a huge checkerboard coordinated through a central cross and secondly by a human Community composed of individual families and governed by a priest king who preserved the social compound in a pure and peaceful form by solemn jurisdiction and rights of purification by this means Divine peace with all the benov in numerous Gods whose presence was felt in nature was assured and by that they are undisturbed and fruitful working the name of this blessing that became visible in the good outcome of the crops and fertility of the livestock was Parks peace and vard peace and friendl of the Gods parks and V deum the name of the single settler was then a word for friend that still exists in the vocabulary of some Indo European languages as Scandinavian and Dutch in the legal Cosmos formed by a community of when everyone was protected by a procedure destined to vindicate to vindicate the same word his freedom and all was all what was regarded as his own the Youth of his land the members of his family the livestock you us to plow and fertilize the fields and all his chattle and all the other belongings it is typical for the continuity of the Roman law that the Latin word vindicar that contains the notion of when the befriended settler and the friendliness of the Gods remained absolutely Central throughout its history for all the individual rights of freedom and property the central conviction that the god of the sky was in favor of agriculture alter was formed by an observation maintained forever in a particular religious right of protection whenever a Roman Ambassador had to go into a foreign country he was put under the special protection of J with the means of a sod taken from the holy Grove the clearance that was a Dwelling Place of the priest king of the beginning this religious R shows that the religion attributed to the sord the quintessence of the protective and benevolent benevolent power experienced in their settlement and guaranteed by all what the priest king performed to maintain the peaceful order that venerated the god the logic can be understood when we imagine people on the verge of the Neolithic Revolution taking sight of a clearance or taking sight in a clearance of sorts of grass with blades and stalks full of seeds that is the mother plant of all cereals here the god of the sky has sent a clear message for those Minds still in later times ridden by anxiety anxiety anxiety when clearing a forest and rooting out its trees and shrubs the message they read was Jupiter is in favor of clearing the woods to permit the growth of fertile grass and will help to preserve a FAL peace with the forces active in nature provided that settling men will project on the territory and within the settlement a divine order that venerates the supremacy of the god of the clear sky of dupa the best and the richest the holy Grove becames consequently with his holy thoughts the side of the priest king who venerated the God not only venerated the gods and Jupiter not only by religious rights but especially by creating a peaceful order in the settlement on the territory and in all legal relationships the enduring success of this founding idea is due to the basic soundness of the direction it gave to all organizing activities and to the easiness which which it could be transferred to Greater entities social peace on the basis of the indep dependence of every single household respected as the site where work is done and new members of the communities are raised it good is good policy and can be applied for a village and a city state alike it is also independent of the kind of work and is therefore equally valid that the business of a single household is no long no longer mainly agriculture but manufacturing or trading or something else therefore the idea to please dove with a of a well-ordered citiy remained a central feature of Roman law and was repeated every 5 years in the Solem census the creation of such an order coincided with the establishment of the settlement with its different families or household in the surve territory its maintenance was realized by intervening Whenever there was a strife and dispute between the settlers in regard of their part in the established order with a scope to reaffirm it by deciding that is who was entitled to the use of the disputed pece of land or by determining the disputed boundaries between two possessions this activity was jurisdiction and exclusively done with a means of Regal Authority that objectively declared what was right in the given social situation and relationship it never never used the means of command reserved for the reserve for the military but proceeded by declaring one relationship and the exercise of it the just one the Pres preservation of the rule of law seen as a form of veneration of the sublime power of the sky and the means to ensure the blessing of the Gods was entirely a a religious task devoted to peace it required a Charisma in an undisturbed contact with the clear sky not only war and lightning not only war and lightning but also the world of the military preparing of the military war preparing War had therefore to be kept at a safe distance any contact was seen as a contamination here is the reason why the official garment worn by the Romans was the peaceful toga a loose flowing single piece of cloth covering the whole body apart from the right arm it is close to impossible to behave aggressively in such an outfit when cisero said San Arma to military power must give way to the superiority of the peaceful rule of law he referred to a deeply rooted tradition since this law organized from the beginning the life of free settlers under the rule of law binding the priest king and the later magist to the role of administering this order the Romans had good reason for the conviction that all the traits of the Republic were already formed under the First Kings of the mega gains in which the legitimacy of the kingship came from the patr the founding fathers present in the Senate it was therefore easy for the Romans to interpret the it was easy for the Romans to interpret their beginnings and rewriting the history in the light of the helenistic theories they uh later on adopted the system offered by the founding allowed such reinterpretation without destroying its sacred continuity with this beginning the Romans or the early Latins had made the best of the Neolithic Revolution that brought sedentary agriculture by reacting to to it with the creation of villes living under the rule of a law that established uh that established freedom for the settler giving peaceful form for every relevant social relationship the priest king in charge wielded Authority and the power to interpret And to clarify but had no right no right to command the command the Imperium was an institution of the military I repeat it from which the realm of divine peace was anxiously separated one is a well-known rule that a military commander and chief who passed the precinct of the city that repeated the precinct of the ancient Village lost immediately his command other great Mediterranean cultures like Egypt and motop mes mesot Mesopotamia based too on the Neolithic Revolution made another choice and established absolute kings that exerted the same military might they used against the enemy also against their subjects their law was consequentially as the famous codex huapi tells us and other parall legal orders based on commands the imagery is accordingly very different where the austian propaganda insisted in Rome on the park Rana showing Augustus in a peaceful toga performing rights to secure the peace with the gods the pharaoh of Egypt is often seen with a swinging club killing a feted person in the Mesopotamia region we find similar images in Roman tradition this would have constituted a grave violation of the necessary separateness of peace and War of the distinction between the reign of Jupiter and the reign of Mars but the emperor realized also that it might be easier to govern that way so when Egypt became finally a Roman province under Augustus some Roman emperors found it attractive to pose as a pharaoh swinging the club The Maze I remember having seen the Roman Emperor kakala on the temple wall making this physical exercise in a recent discovery and you see all what I have said on the last page of my handout in a recent discovery in the middle parts of Europe in the center of today's Germany dating from the Neolithic period this recent discovery proves that the idea brought to Perfection by the protor Romans to cultivate the fields venerating on Earth the divine order visible in the sky was very diffused in this period the famous disc of nebra discovered only 9 years ago is intensely related to Agriculture and is in is in fact showing a constellation of sun moon and the playards that represents for the region meant the traditional beginning of the Agricultural year oh I thank you I have only five minutes more I will come to a close the but I'm uh confident that five minutes will do uh the conviction that uh the Supreme Divinity revered by establishing and showing order and peace in the settlement in its territory was present and visible in this clear sky wed over the land had important consequences in what we could call International Affairs the belief that the Divinity was validly and equally present over every settlement or state that is that every settlement had not only its share in its territorial possession but also in the divine blessing of its sky constituted internationally the principle of perfect equality the sky was the same for every settlement and equally divided the Divinity looking from above demanded everywhere the same to venerate her by responding to her beauty and Clarity with a peaceful order on Earth the result was that the eldest layer of Youth gum the law between the original settlements of Latium represented an international law of outstanding qualities um I will close now with an observation that the common law the younger sister of the civil law was characterized by the same combination of history and reason and as such with equal Clarity not based on command but on Authority it suffices to quote the great lawyer Edward cook copies copies of whose books were on board the Mayflower and who famously explained to the king of England James I who wanted to interfere with his commands into the course of law that law is based on artificial reason that requires a long and dedicated study he expressed cook expressed his deep belief in the presence of Reason in the historically given law he administered by saying I quote reason is the life of the law nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason God by long study observation and experience and not of every man's natural reason for now he continues in Latin Neo Nas artifacts nobody is born an expert as to make clear that he was as convinced as a Roman where of the fact that a legal relation pre-exists the decision and is not created by the decision he formulated forcefully the function of a judge is not to make but to declare the law according to the golden meat rent of the law and not the Crooked cord of discretion and he summarizes the gist of civil law when he names as a first purpose for which cities were instituted I quote for conservation of laws whereby every man enjoys his own in peace the book that elaborates the Deep affinity between the spirit of the Roman law and the spirit of the common law described by very impressive book of Rosco pound is still to be written it would have also to deal with the parallels between the Roman origin and the origin of the Union you are living in some parallels are striking not the least the importance of land surveying for the establishment of villages dominated by freeholders those American land surveyors practic this fine art you see also in the hand out as the Roman art did not only feel themselves in the tradition of the Roman L surveyors who were the secular practitioners of an initially purely augural technique but were so imbued by classical erudition that it is their Merit that the civilian and the romanist feel so much at home here with all these places recalling classical Antiquity isaka and zurak Cru and of course Romulus symbolizing as you have heard the importance of a blessed founding for a constitution and a thriving Republic I thank you very much for your atten thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much Professor Barons for that remarkable presentation we have time for one or two questions uh if you would if you would care to um to uh ask a question I know that uh afterwards I will be asked many questions about your talk but I will not be able to answer so well as you so here is your chance um I'm sure someone has at least one question uh yes are there any situations where there's a clash between the military Authority and in the Civil or Spiritual Authority and Spiritual Authority out in world oh yes there were many cles especially when a military commander and chief wanted to have a Triumph he M he had to be very careful not to fenise the precinct of the city state because when he went over this threshold he lost immediately uh his uh Power because there was this basic rule of the incompatibility between military command and the peaceful order having its Center in the in the city in the city state and uh it is or there are many interesting uh items in the ancient calendar preserved from the very beginning of Rome there is a right called po fos and RI fos this means the people in the ancient connotation was the military the uh the Romans under command of a commander were the populus and the Rex was the priest king who had to preserve the peaceful order and there was careful observation not to not to contaminate the Charisma of peace with the disorder of War

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Length: 55min 54sec (3354 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2009