Great Ideas of Philosophy

III. Roman law successfully permitted Rome to administer the known world for centuries.A. One of the most poignant documents of antiquity appears when the Visigoths had sacked Rome and takenit over, in the 5 th century A.D. One of the first items promulgated by the leaders of the Visigoths is titled lexromana Visigothorum: “the Roman law of the Visigoths.”1. This document commits the new rulers to the Roman rule of law, to the possibility of settling disputeswithout violence, and to the respect for individuals implicit in the idea that they will be able tounderstand and obey the law.2. By the 5 th century A.D., Rome was no longer the unopposable force it had once been. What wasdurable in Roman civilization was neither the military nor the city itself, but the law of Rome, theadministrative machinery, governed by principle and administered by legally trained and sophisticatedand subtle minds.B. Justinian’s Institutes, or elements of law, provide a 6 th -century consideration of juridical principlesdeveloped by Roman lawyers over the course of centuries.1. The Institutes, which are the work of Tribonian and his colleagues commissioned by Justinian, beginwith this statement:The law of nature is the law instilled by nature in all creatures. It is not merely for mankind but forall creatures of the sky, earth and sea.... All peoples with laws and customs apply law which ispartly theirs alone and partly shared by all mankind…. The law which natural reason makes for allmankind… is called “the law of all peoples” [ius gentium].2. Could Stoicism have said it any better? What is taken for granted is that nature does nothing without apurpose, that there is an order and reasonableness to the world, and that human affairs are to begoverned by the same rationality.C. Consider what is meant in the Institutes by nature fitting out all creatures with law.1. The animal kingdom does instinctually what is required for its own survival and flourishing. So, too,are peoples fitted out by nature with certain intuitive understandings essential to a life that will beflourishing, coherent, and culturally continuing.2. And how does nature do this? By making us aware at the most fundamental and intuitive level of coreprecepts of equity.IV. The ius gentium is a unifying principle capable of smoothing out the differences of culture and custom andproviding at least the possibility of a shared civic life. What is the status of the ius gentium in the multiculturalworld of the 21 st century?A. What Roman law reduced to written form was understood to reach all who qualify as rational beings, andthe Roman Empire was about as “multicultural” as any nation in the history of the world.B. The ancient world, for all its elitism, recognized a fundamental, unifying force according to which we havea shared psychology, a shared spirituality, and a common humanity. The law in its developed form mustappeal to that.C. Find a creature that cannot be appealed to at that level, and the best explanation is not that the creature isthe product of a different culture, but that the creature is incomplete in its humanity, outside the naturalorder of humanity.D. In contrast, find a mature, healthy adult anywhere in the world, and that person, in virtue of his or herrationality, will recognize certain precepts as unchallengeable. Were the world otherwise, it would beimpossible even to engage in trade or to explain why punishment is imposed for certain transgressions orwhy rewards are given.E. The cultural variations we observe are not merely artificial entries that obscure what is, indeed,homogeneity. No, there is great heterogeneity from culture to culture. Rome was persuaded, however, thatsuch heterogeneity did not extend to the level of rationality itself; therefore, all people, wherever they werefrom, whatever they believed, and whatever their customary practices were, were fit for the rule of law andcould be brought up to be worthy of the rule of law.F. After the Goths had sacked Rome, a number of Romans came back to their defeated city to see what wasleft. One of these men, Rutilius Namatianus, wrote these lines about Rome:14©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership