Awards
- Nominated for Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies 2006
- Nominated for James Willard Hurst Prize 2013
Overview
Law is a specific form of social regulation distinct from religion, ethics, and even politics, and endowed with a strong and autonomous rationality. Its invention, a crucial aspect of Western history, took place in ancient Rome. Aldo Schiavone, a world-renowned classicist, reconstructs this development with clear-eyed passion, following its course over the centuries, setting out from the earliest origins and moving up to the threshold of Late Antiquity. The invention of Western law occurred against the backdrop of the Roman Empire's gradual consolidation-an age of unprecedented accumulation of power which transformed an archaic predisposition to ritual into an unrivaled technology for the control of human dealings. Schiavone offers us a closely reasoned interpretation that returns us to the primal origins of Western legal machinery and the discourse that was constructed around it-formalism, the pretense of neutrality, the relationship with political power. This is a landmark work of scholarship whose influence will be felt by classicists, historians, and legal scholars for decades.
Full Product Details
Author: Aldo Schiavone ,
Jeremy Carden ,
Antony Shugaar
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Imprint: The Belknap Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.20cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.666kg
ISBN: 9780674047334
ISBN 10: 0674047338
Pages: 640
Publication Date: 01 January 2012
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Awaiting stock
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.
Language: Italian
Reviews
Everyone recognizes that during the early Roman Empire law emerged as a professionalized and vital part of statecraft, but few understand the wrenching intellectual controversy that accompanied the transformation. Aldo Schiavone's terrific book brings this historic debate into dazzling focus.--Bruce Frier, University Michigan The wide sweep and deeply humanistic approach of The Invention of Law in the West--with its emphasis on the primary sources and concise critical synthesis of much previous scholarship--make this ambitious volume perhaps the best attempt yet by any scholar to animate the venerable yet highly complex, technically demanding and intellectually isolated field of Roman law for a wider readership...It indisputably marks a new and welcome opening in its field.-- (12/21/2012)
The wide sweep and deeply humanistic approach of The Invention of Law in the West--with its emphasis on the primary sources and concise critical synthesis of much previous scholarship--make this ambitious volume perhaps the best attempt yet by any scholar to animate the venerable yet highly complex, technically demanding and intellectually isolated field of Roman law for a wider readership...It indisputably marks a new and welcome opening in its field.--T. Corey Brennan Time Literary Supplement (12/21/2012)
Author Information
Aldo Schiavone founded the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, where he was Professor of Roman Law. He is the principal investigator of a European Research Council Project on Roman legal thought, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the author of books including The End of the Past, The Invention of Law in the West, Spartacus, What Is Progress, and Pontius Pilate.
