Review of Schiavone (A.) 'The Invention of Law in the West'. Translated by Jeremy Carden and Antony Shugaar. Pp. x + 624. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012 (first published as 'Ius. L'invenzione del diritto in Occidente', 2005). Cased, £36.95, €45, US$49.95. ISBN: 978-0-674-04733-4.

Abstract

In this elegant translation S. takes as his beginning the idea that 'law is, in its specificity, an invention of the West' (p. viii) and in particular of Roman jurisprudence. With the ambition of restoring the jurists' writings to their place in history, S. traces this invention of 'law' through examining the development of Roman legal thinking from the archaic period through to Ulpian against a background of expanding empire, trade and slavery and changes in the governance of Rome itself. In so doing, S. has produced a work that is insightful, stimulating and often complex - in his own words, it is 'not an easy book' (p. viii). In describing 'law' as a western, particularly Roman, invention, S. acknowledges other societies' normative systems, but claims that only in Rome did the system of legal ordering become subject to a strict specialisation with its own autonomy, removed from religion, morals and politics, from which arose an ideological discourse as to law's 'independence' and 'neutrality'.