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21 September 2021

BOOK : Capucine NEMO-PEKELMAN (dir), Katell BERTHELOT (dir), Natalie DOHRMANN (dir), Legal engagement The reception of Roman law and tribunals by Jews and other inhabitants of the Empire, (Ecole française de Rome, Rome, 2021), ISBN : 978-2-7283-1464-5, pp.535, 40€

 

About the book : 


The Roman empire set law at the center of its very identity. A complex and robust ideology of law and justice is evident not only in the dynamics of imperial administration, but a host of cultural arenas. Citizenship named the privilege of falling under Roman jurisdiction, legal expertise was cultural capital. A faith in the emperor’s intimate concern for justice was a key component of the voluntary connection binding Romans and provincials to the state.
Even as law was a central mechanism for control and the administration of state violence, it also exerted a magnetic effect on the peoples under its control. Adopting a range of approaches, the essays explore the impact of Roman law, both in the tribunal and in the culture. Unique to this anthology is attention to legal professionals and cultural intermediaries operating at the empire’s periphery. The studies here allow one to see how law operated among a range of populations and provincials—from Gauls and Brittons to Egyptians and Jews—exploring the ways local peoples creatively navigated, and constructed, their legal realities between Roman and local mores. They draw our attention to the space between laws and legal ideas, between ethnic, especially Jewish, life and law and the structures of Roman might; cases in which shared concepts result in diverse ends; the pageantry of the legal tribunal, the imperatives and corruptions of power differentials; and the importance of reading the gaps between depiction of law and its actual workings.
This volume is unusual in bringing Jewish, and especially rabbinic, sources and perspectives together with Roman, Greek or Christian ones. This is the result of its being part of the research program “Judaism and Rome” (ERC Grant Agreement no. 614 424), dedicated to the study of the impact of the Roman empire upon ancient Judaism.


The contributors are : Carlos LEVY, Julien DUBOULOZ, Clifford ANDO, Ari Z. BRYEN, Kaius TUORI, Hayim LAPIN, Aitor BLANCO-PEREZ, Julien FOURNIER, Soazick KERNEIS, Marie ROUX, Kimberley CZAJKOWSKI, Yair FURSTENBERG, Catherine HEZSER, Orit MALKA, Yakir PAZ, Yael WILFAND, Ron NAIWELD, Kimberley FOWLER, Christine HAYES.


About the directors of the book :  

Katell Berthelot is a CNRS Professor working on the history of Jews and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, and a member of the TDMAM research center at Aix-Marseille University (UMR 7297). In 2014-2019 she was the Principal Investigator of the ERC “Judaism and Rome”.
 
Natalie B. Dohrmann of the University of Pennsylvania researches rabbinic culture in the context of the Roman Near East, especially on the relationship between Roman law and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism.
 
Capucine Nemo-Pekelman is Assistant Professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre, in the Faculty of Law. She is a Legal Historian specialized in Roman Law and the legal status of the Jews in Late Antiquity.


Table of contents : 

Acknowledgments vii 

Katell BERTHELOT, Natalie DOHRMANN and Capucine NEMO-PEKELMAN, Introduction  p.1 

ROMAN LAW, PROVINCIALS AND BARBARIANS 

Carlos LEVY, Cicero, the law and the barbarians  p.29 

Julien DUBOULOZ, Accommodating former legal systems and Roman law: Cicero’s rhetorical and legal viewpoint in the Verrine Orations  p.47 

Clifford ANDO, Performing justice in Republican empire, 1-565 CE   p.69 

IMPERIAL JUSTICE AS DRAMA 

Ari Z. BRYEN, A frenzy of sovereignty: Punishment in P.Aktenbuch   p.89 

Kaius TUORI, Between the good king and the cruel tyrant: The Acta Isidori and the perception of Roman emperors among provincial litigants   p.109 

Hayim LAPIN, Pappus and Julianus, the Maccabaean martyrs, and rabbinic martyrdom history in Late Antiquity   p.133 

PROVINCIAL NEGOTIATION WITH THE IMPERIAL LEGAL SYSTEM 

Aitor BLANCO-PEREZ, Appealing for the emperor’s justice: Provincial petitions and imperial responses prior to Late Antiquity    p.159 

Julien FOURNIER, Representing the rights of a city: Ekdikoi in Roman courts   p.175 

Capucine NEMO-PEKELMAN, Jewish judicial patrons and advocates in the western empire (5th cent.)   p.195 

LEGAL PLURALISM UNDER EMPIRE 

Soazick KERNEIS, Legal pluralism in the western Roman empire: Popular legal sources and legal history   p.215 

Marie ROUX, Judicial pluralism in the Wisigothic kingdom of Toulouse: Special jurisdictions and communal courts   p.231 

Kimberley CZAJKOWSKI, Legal knowledge and its transmission in three marriage contracts from the Judaean desert   p.251 

Yair FURSTENBERG, Imperialism and the creation of local law: The case of rabbinic law   p.271 

THE IMPACT OF IMPERIAL LAW ON RABBINIC LEGAL THINKING 

Catherine HEZSER, Did Palestinian rabbis know Roman law? Methodological considerations and case studies   p.303 

Orit MALKA and Yakir PAZ, A rabbinic postliminium: The property of captives in tannaitic halakhah in light of Roman law   p.323 

Yael WILFAND, “A proselyte whose sons converted with him”: Roman laws on new citizens’ authority over their children and tannaitic rulings on converts to Judaism and their offspring   p.345 

Natalie  DOHRMANN, Ad similitudinem arbitrorum: On the perils of commensurability and comparison in Roman and rabbinic arbitration law    p.365 

LAW AND SELF-PERCEPTION 

Katell BERTHELOT, “Not like our Rock is their rock” (Deut 32:31): Rabbinic perceptions of Roman law courts and jurisdiction   p.389 

Ron NAIWELD, The rabbinic model of sovereignty in its biblical and imperial contexts   p.409 

Kimberley FOWLER, Early Christian perspectives on Roman law and Mosaic law   p.429 

Christine HAYES, ‘Barbarians’ judge the law: The rabbis on the un-civil law of Rome   p.455 

Index of ancient sources   p.499 

Abstracts   p.525 

Table of contents   p.533

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