Nicholas Barry, Metzger Ernest. An Introduction to Roman Law. Oxford University Press,1976. — 317 p.. 1976

A colleague once told me that, even after long years teaching Roman law, he still reads Nicholas’s Introduction with profit. Other veterans would say the same. This can hardly be true of many introductory textbooks in law, and those other magic books, if they exist, would never serve both students and scholars so wonderfully as Nicholas’s Introduction does. It is above all a very thoughtful book. The typical Roman law textbook of a generation earlier was efficient in communicating the rules, but lacked the patience to explain the things that puzzle students the most: Why this rule and not another? What problem is this rule trying to solve? Why did the jurists not grasp what is so obvious to us? and so on. Knowledge of the rules is never enough; students learn to make the noises of a civilian lawyer with none of his understanding. We easily forget how much this book rejects that older style, but we can see it and feel it in the pace of the discussion. Nicholas noticeably slows down and speeds up. He slows down to linger over the difficult subjects like possession, where a bad beginning would ruin a person’s understanding of almost everything that follows. He slows down to describe the modern law, showing the staying power of ideas that happen to be very good, or admitting the shortcomings of ideas that got the burial they deserved. He speeds up when the subject turns to rules and institutions that sit dumbly without telling us anything interesting about the Romans or their law. Throughout the book he includes facts about Roman social life, without which the Roman actors would seem to us to be performing some mysterious dance.

Nicholas Barry, Metzger Ernest. An Introduction to Roman Law. Oxford University Press,1976. — 317 p.. 1976

Books and textbooks on the discipline Roman law: