CONCLUSION

I have no doubt that the objection will be made to my approach that I do not distinguish between law in books and law in action. Of course I am well aware of the difference. But I would insist that one cannot understand law in action without knowing law in books.

Addendum

I mentioned earlier in this paper that Bruce Frier asked Jean-Jacques Aubert whether the purpose of the panel meeting of the American Philo­logical Association in 1996 was to take me to task, really for neglecting law in action as distinct from law in books. I strongly deny that I neglect law in action, and would single out my already mentioned book, Slave Law in the Americas, which very much separates out law in action from law in books. A fundamental argument of mine was that to a very great extent the main influ­ence on slave law in territories dominated by countries of continental Europe was Roman law which was non-racist whereas slavery in the Americas was profoundly racist. Law in action was fundamentally different from the law in the books. Significantly, that book, of all my works, received the least atten­tion.

My explanation for this lack of interest - self-centred as I always am - is that the reviewers were reluctant to get involved with the realities of the peculiar nature of law in books.

The main goal of this chapter is to come to grips with the issue of law and society. My fundamental argument is that those who write in the context of Roman law in action as distinct from law in books do not pay much attention, if any, to the nature of law in books.

I have stated elsewhere that Roman law is the perfect laboratory for a study of law in society. We can observe it in an early city state, in the Rome of the Twelve Tables, in a developing Republic, under imperial - becoming dicta­torial - rule, in a booming economy, in financial collapse, under paganism then under Christianity, in the Roman West then in the Greek East. Not only that, we can follow its reception, in Germanic societies, in mediaeval Italy and then beyond, in the Age of Scholasticism and then of Humanism, in Europe and far beyond. Yet, much of the implication of this is ignored by legal scholars, sociologists and cultural historians