Roman law provisions on desertion had features that were totally different from the common Roman criminal law. Introduction While watching –once again—the classic and broadly acclaimed movie Ben-Hur, I thought about the legal consequences of deserting from the Roman Army for Roman conscripts and soldiers. Desertion was a serious crime under Roman military law, as[…]
Headlines from that era that reveal a deeper history of popular interest in crime dramas, one that feels very familiar today. Ester Naddeo was dead. She had been living at 127 Calle Prudan in Buenos Aires for about four months. But on Sunday, the ninth of January, 1910, her corpse was removed from the apartment[…]
The stories behind the pictures. By Diarmid Mogg Martin Fobes woke up to the sound of officers from the New Castle police department banging on his front door. It was early on a January morning, still dark, and he was lying flat on his living room floor, where he had passed out a few hours[…]
More than 200 years ago, a group of Philadelphian reformers had a utopian vision of how prisons should be run. At work we notice a mummified cat. It rests in a pile of paint chips and splintered wood in the wreck of the prison warden’s quarters. The other tour guides and I venture across floorboards[…]
In the lawless post-Civil War Ozarks, the vigilante Bald Knobbers took government’s place. When I was seven years old, in 1983, my family took a road trip from Stillwater, Oklahoma, to Branson, Missouri, a family-oriented resort town deep in the Ozark Mountains. Our destination was Silver Dollar City, a Christian-owned theme park that is like[…]
Fake news and smoking guns made the Kansas town a symbol of frontier lawlessness. Everywhere American popular culture has penetrated, people use the phrase “Get out of Dodge” or “Gettin’ outta Dodge” when referring to some dangerous or threatening or generally unpleasant situation. The metaphor is thought to have originated among U.S. troops during the[…]
Where does economic power come from? Does it exist independently of the law? It seems obvious, even undeniable, that the answer is no. Law creates, defines and enforces property rights. Law enforces private contracts. It charters corporations and shields investors from liability. Law declares illegal certain contracts of economic cooperation between separate individuals – which[…]
From gruesome, public executions to Georgian Britain’s adoration of the ‘heroic’ highwayman, the author investigates attitudes to crime and punishment in Georgian Britain. Introduction Throughout this period many people viewed criminals and law breaking as heroic and courageous, and the activities of robbers and villains were often widely celebrated in popular culture. Stories of daring[…]
The prison was constructed around 640–616 BCE, by Ancus Marcius. Introduction The Mamertine Prison (Italian: Carcere Mamertino), in antiquity the Tullianum, was a prison (carcer) located in the Comitium in ancient Rome. It was situated on the northeastern slope of the Capitoline Hill, facing the Curia and the imperial fora of Nerva, Vespasian, and Augustus. Located between it and the Tabularium (record house)[…]
The laws aided and legitimized the political power of the aristocracy and allowed them to consolidate their control of the land and poor. By Antonios Loizides Introduction Draco was an aristocrat who in 7th century BCE Athens was handed the task of composing a new body of laws. We have no particular clues concerning his[…]
The Supreme Court had barely gotten used to its new chamber when the War of 1812 commenced and the British marched on Washington. Historical Highlights Located on the ground floor of the original north wing of the Capitol Building, this space served as the Senate chamber from 1800 to 1808. It was here that the[…]
Fook Shing spent 20 years as a Melbourne gumshoe. He policed the thriving Chinese community – claiming opium as an expense – but was never promoted above his entry rank of detective third class. On July 25 1882, Inspector Frederick Secretan, the head of Victoria Police’s Detective Branch, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. In the[…]
Edmund Randolph was the seventh Governor of Virginia, the second Secretary of State, and the first United States Attorney General. Introduction Randolph was born on August 10, 1753 to the influential Randolph family in Williamsburg in the Colony of Virginia. He was educated at the College of William and Mary. After graduation he began reading law with his father John Randolph and uncle, Peyton Randolph.[…]
Lawyers spoke their own language, even in the Middle Ages. When John of Salisbury (ca. 1115-1180) decried the dishonesty of lawyers in his Policraticus, he targeted the incomprehensibility of their legalese, complaining that “they snare simple men in nets of impenetrable jargon … ‘Woe unto those who know not how to syllabificate.’”[1] The sentiment expressed by John[…]
Early modern women were subjected to multiple realms of authority in both the private and public spheres. By Taryn McMillanFreelance WriterMcMaster University It was the spring of 1596 and Jehanne Petit, a young widow, ventured to the local bailliage (bailiwick) court to request a greater share of her first husband’s wealth. In the sleepy village of Châtillon-sur-Seine,[…]
The law’s “brooding presence” was very real to political actors in early modern France. Old Regime France, David Bell has observed, was a “judicial society” where “the experiences of the law courts were central to the way in which political action was conceptualized.”[1] Theorists distinguished the king’s “absolute power” from the rule of a tyrant by[…]
Athenians preferred to memorialize punishments for eternity. By Dr. Danielle S. AllenJames Conant Bryan University Professor of Political TheoryUniversity of Harvard Here we can no longer avoid turning to the gory details. I will begin with a simple list of the penalties imposed in Athens, say a few words about the most interesting penalties, and[…]
Medieval commerce had little space for a specialized law, and merchants had little need for it. Abstract The story of a medieval law merchant has a strong hold on scholars interested in private ordering. Despite numerous historical works demonstrating the falsity of the myth, it continues to be discussed regularly in scholarship as if it[…]
Strategies in translating the first national law-code of Norway, the Landslov from 1274, into English. Abstract This paper demonstrates strategies in translating the first national law-code of Norway, the Landslov from 1274, into English. One can argue the need to have Old Norwegian law in English to make it more accessible. To ensure that a[…]
Two powerful and often conflicting legal systems had emerged. Early Development When the Germanic tribes entered the lands of the Western Roman empire, they brought many of their customs and traditions with them, among them being those customs and traditions that comprised their system of justice. The bases of those systems among the various peoples[…]
Recovering a more capacious social topology from the Thomist theology that modern Western philosophy supplanted. Titled Declarations of Dependence: Money, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Care(University of Nebraska Press, July 2018) my recent book develops the insights of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) for critical theory and aesthetics. While the modern Liberal imagination treats money as a finite, private and[…]
Socrates said that law was a discovery of the reality in relations – that is, of the ideally significant. Lecture by Dr. Nathan Roscoe Pound / 04.04.1940Dean of Harvard Law School, 1916-1936 Law is a word of many meanings. In the sense in which I shall be using it, in the sense of law with[…]