Legal Artifices: Ten Essays on Roman Law in the Present Tense

Western legal professionals habitually rely on a version of legal history that bolsters their own sway over the present. The legal mythologies undergirding these self-serving proposals are divided between doctrines of law's immemorial nature, and of its sacred (Roman) origins. Thomas'sde-mythicised jurisprudence, presented in this collection of essays, dismisses these sagas. His work sent seismic waves across the humanities and social sciences, with claims including: Law is not a set of rules, but the operation of legal arguments; lawyers are the agents of the legaldenaturalisation of the world Rome is misread as an essentially political entity; the effect exercised on Roman society by its jurists ranks before that of its politicians Despite a widely accepted opposition between modern labour law and the Roman renting-out of a slave's workforce, there existunexpected commonalities 'Legal order' and 'responsibility' are among the inventions of modern law; they are not part of the timeless inventory of the world
This volume collects and translates 10 essays by renowned Roman and legal history specialist Yan Thomas (1943–2008), the most renowned French jurist of the 20th century.
Yan Thomas taught at the École des Hautes Études (Paris) until his death in 2008 at the age of 56. Truly seminal as a specialist in Roman and legal history, Thomas left a work that consists mainly of numerous articles. His work is best described as an inventory of genealogical prolegomena to the understanding of the Western legal tradition. The essays collected here provide a clear insight into the stakes of Thomas' renowned inquiries. Thomas’ investigations into Roman history and law focus, case-by-case, upon the law’s operations – and, by extension, upon their expansion and transmission.