Preface

This collection of papers was presented at a conference organised by the Edinburgh Roman Law Group in 2005. This group, the brainchild of the late Peter Birks - a brilliant jurist and sometime Professor of Civil Law in the University of Edinburgh - is an interdisciplinary forum dedicated to the study of civil law and the civilian tradition in its historical context.

In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of the Edinburgh Roman Law Group, it seems fitting that the first volume produced by it should also have a wide focus. The theme of this volume is “law and society”, a topic which has attracted much interest in legal scholarship both current and historical during the last decade. The broad aim of this collection is to address two perennial questions within this debate. First, whether law is a product of the society that produces it and, second, whether it should necessarily be assumed that a close relationship between law and society exists. The authors in this volume have taken Roman law, a body of legal rules which has had an enduring influence on much of contemporary private law in Western Europe and elsewhere, as the subject of their investigation. This is not a compre­hensive account of Roman private law and its relationship to Roman society. Rather, the contributors to this volume have chosen specific areas of law and practice, currently the subject of debate, to investigate the relationship be­tween law and society. It is hoped that the results produced by this selective investigation will encourage others to investigate the matter further.

The Edinburgh Roman Law Group plans to host similar mini-conferences on the civilian tradition in its historical context in a four-year cycle. The next gathering will focus on the development of the ius commune in its historical sense in the period 1100-1400 and the rise of legal doctrine. It is envisaged that the collection of papers from this conference will form the second volume produced by the ERLG.

This volume, and the conference which preceded it, would not have been possible without the financial assistance of the Small Project Research Grant Scheme of the University of Edinburgh and the School of Law: the Roman Law Group thanks both. Finally, the editors wish to thank the editorial board of the Edinburgh Studies in Law and specifically Elspeth Reid for keeping faith and accepting this volume for publication.

JWC P J du P.

Old College, July 2006