Wildy Logo
(020) 7242 5778
enquiries@wildy.com

Book of the Month

Cover of Munkman on Employer's Liability

Munkman on Employer's Liability

Edited by: Marcus Pilgerstorfer KC
Price: £229.99

Adoption Law:
A Practical Guide 2nd ed




Welcome to Wildys

Watch


Enquiries of Local Authorities
and Water Companies:
A Practical Guide 7th ed



 Keith Pugsley, Ken Miles


Offers for Newly Called Barristers & Students

Special Discounts for Newly Called & Students

Read More ...


Secondhand & Out of Print

Browse Secondhand Online

Read More...


The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories


ISBN13: 9781009629959
To be Published: September 2025
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: UK
Format: Hardback
Price: £90.00



Why is Roman law so boring? In this book, Zachary Herz argues that the bureaucratic, positivistic world of Roman law is not a distraction from the violent autocracy of the Roman empire, but an imagined escape. Lawyers, bureaucrats, and even emperors used legal writing to think about worlds that were safer or fairer than the one in which they lived. This archive of political imagination slowly became a law-code, and now guides readers through a legal system about which its authors could only dream.

From Augustus to Justinian, this book shows how law symbolized order in chaotic times, and how that symbol eventually took on a life of its own. From the enlightened judgements of Hadrian to the great jurists and child rulers of Severan Rome, Herz reveals what Romans were really talking about when they talked about law.

Subjects:
Roman Law and Greek Law
Contents:
Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Introduction: did Romans have law? Part I. Nevertheless, we Live According to the Laws:
1. Augustus and the birth of imperial legality
2. The emperors who obeyed the law: Vespasian, Titus, Trajan
3. Letters from a god: Hadrian and the rescript system
Part II. Law without Order:
4. Inheritance, authority, and Alexander
5. Juristic reasoning, citational practices, and law at the end of an empire
Part III. New Rules:
6. Towards late antique legalities
7. The embodiment of the civil law
Conclusion: what we talk about when we talk about Roman law

Appendix 1. Juristic citations of imperial lawmaking in the digest
Appendix 2. Precedential reasoning in the codex Justinianus
Appendix 3. Rule-Consequentialist reasoning in the digest
Bibliography
Index of terms
Index of sources

Series: Studies in Legal History

Extradition and Empire: Sovereignty and Subjecthood in Hong Kong ISBN 9781009356930
To be published June 2025
Cambridge University Press
£100.00
Out of print
£35.00
Out of print
£105.00
Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France ISBN 9781009217880
Published August 2024
Cambridge University Press
£25.99
Family Matters: Queer Households and the Half-Century Struggle for Legal Recognition ISBN 9781009284400
Published August 2024
Cambridge University Press
£30.00
Family Matters: Queer Households and the Half-Century Struggle for Legal Recognition (eBook) ISBN 9781009284394
Published August 2024
Cambridge University Press
Out of print
Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900 ISBN 9781009392150
Published October 2023
Cambridge University Press
£100.00
Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900 (eBook) ISBN 9781009392143
Published October 2023
Cambridge University Press
Out of print
Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law (eBook) ISBN 9781009219204
Published May 2023
Cambridge University Press
Out of print
Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law ISBN 9781009219198
Published May 2023
Cambridge University Press
£47.99
Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France ISBN 9781009217897
Published November 2022
Cambridge University Press
£95.00
Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France (eBook) ISBN 9781009217903
Published November 2022
Cambridge University Press
Out of print
The Science of Proof: Forensic Medicine in Modern France (eBook) ISBN 9781009198387
Published September 2022
Cambridge University Press
Out of print
The Science of Proof: Forensic Medicine in Modern France ISBN 9781009198332
Published September 2022
Cambridge University Press
£85.00
Out of print
Imperial Incarceration: Detention without Trial in the Making of British Colonial Africa ISBN 9781316519127
Published September 2021
Cambridge University Press
£90.00
Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England ISBN 9781108712743
Published July 2020
Cambridge University Press
£36.99
Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis ISBN 9781108401531
Published December 2017
Cambridge University Press
£26.99
Taming the Past: Essays on Law in History and History in Law ISBN 9781316644003
Published August 2017
Cambridge University Press
£30.99
Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945 ISBN 9781107084537
Published July 2015
Cambridge University Press
£95.00
Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945 ISBN 9781107446410
Published April 2015
Cambridge University Press
£26.99