London Legal History Seminar 8 November 2024: ‘Princeps legibus solutus est an non? Cultures of Legality in the Roman Empire’

The first London Legal History Seminar for 2024-2025 will take place in the Ante Room of the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College, London, 5.45-7.15. Those intending to attend should contact Professor Mark Lunney to ensure access to the building: mark.lunney@kcl.ac.uk

Dr Tristan Taylor of the University of New England (Australia) will present a paper entitled: “Princeps legibus solutus est a non? Cultures of Legality in the Roman Empire”.

This is the abstract of Dr Taylor’s presentation:

The nature of the position of the Roman emperor presents a paradox for the application of the concept of the ‘rule of law’ to imperial Rome. On the one hand, the emperor made and stood above the law, and was also expected to ameliorate the harshness of the law’s strict application: the antithesis of most notions of the protean concept of the rule of law; on the other, the creation of the principate was seen as a restoration of legal order. This paper argues that one way to understand this paradox is to explore the constraints on the emperor’s legal absolutism imposed by ‘cultures of legality’ in the Roman world: expectations of how law makers and administrators (including the emperor) ought to behave shared by imperial subjects, law makers, administrators and emperors in the multi-legal world of the Roman empire. These ‘cultures’ developed in a discursive process between subject and law makers and administrators in various legal processes, evidenced in expressions of ideals by subject, administrator and emperor. Although there are multiple examples where these cultures provided only an erratic constraint on emperors, law makers and administrators, nonetheless, it was generally agreed by subject and sovereign alike that emperors ought to observe the laws, although technically exempt from them.