The Making of Local Legal Cultures under Rome: A View from the Margins

Descrizione del progetto

Comprendere il processo legislativo locale nell’Impero romano

Nell’Impero romano il diritto veniva impiegato come strumento per affermare l’autorità sui sudditi non romani. Le comunità dell’Oriente greco mantennero le proprie tradizioni giuridiche, che furono assimilate nel sistema giuridico dell’impero; il diritto si affermò progressivamente in modo significativo per i provinciali in relazione alle necessità di negoziare il dominio romano e preservare la propria identità. Il progetto Local Law under Rome, finanziato dal CER, si propone di esaminare le culture giuridiche locali congiuntamente alla giurisprudenza ebraica, che costituisce una fonte esaustiva del processo legislativo locale durante il periodo romano. Il progetto raffronterà i sistemi giuridici locali con l’amministrazione giuridica romana al fine di comprendere i discorsi giuridici subordinati, identificando inoltre i modelli di integrazione tra le tradizioni giuridiche e caratterizzando il legalismo provinciale come metodo di differenziazione culturale e politica in assenza di autonomia giuridica.

Obiettivo

Law and order were Rome’s vehicles for displaying its imperial authority and supremacy over non-Roman subjects. However, Rome did not fill a legal vacuum; rather, it competed with established legal practices among communities in the Greek East. These communities took pride in their legal traditions, as they were being absorbed into the Roman legal order. Consequently, the sphere of law served provincials as a major arena for negotiating Roman power and demarcating their own local identities: what customs to maintain and what trends to resist?

Despite scholarly interest in the plurality of laws under Rome, this project proposes an innovative cross-disciplinary study of these local legal cultures as an expression of provincial agency and self-determination. While previous studies were limited to the scattered remains of legal activities in the Greek East on papyri or on inscriptions, it is the premise of this project that only by integrating the hitherto neglected body of Jewish jurisprudence we may gain access into provincial perceptions of their legal cultures. Early rabbinic literature (1st-3rd centuries CE), which has been marginalized as an isolated phenomenon, is in fact the only comprehensive source of local law-making under Rome and is therefore the most appropriate framework for studying provincial legalisms in all of their forms.

By applying a multi-dimensional comparative analysis of key legal fields, Local Law under Rome provides a structured method including the following stages for proceeding towards a new understanding of subordinate legal discourse: First, the project contextualizes each system of local law separately against the background of Roman legal administration and local traditions. Next, it discerns patterns of integration across different legal traditions, and finally it characterizes the distinct nature of provincial legalism, as means for cultural and political distinction in circumstances of law without power.