Forensic Experts and Roman Law
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Beschreibung
Roman judges increasingly relied on specialists to decide disputed facts. Ido Israelowich reveals how physicians, midwives, surveyors, engineers, and wine experts gained (or failed to gain) legal authority, transforming both Roman justice and the development of law.
Roman law is usually told as the work of jurists. Ido Israelowich shows that its factual groundwork lay elsewhere - with the physicians, midwives, surveyors, and wine experts whose judgement Roman courts came to treat as authoritative. He traces the incentives that led those courts to rely on specialists in resolving factual questions. He asks how and why the authority of such experts came to be recognised and sanctioned: whether this development resulted primarily from advances within the disciplines themselves or from external legal, institutional, and social pressures. He further explores whether the role of forensic experts was confined to adjudicating individual disputes or whether the recognition of forensic authority also shaped the development of Roman positive law. Israelowich focuses on experts whose authority the courts formally acknowledged - land surveyors, physicians, midwives, civil engineers, and wine experts - while also considering representatives of other disciplines who sought, but ultimately failed, to obtain judicial recognition. By tracing the interaction between legal institutions and specialised knowledge, Israelowich shows that forensic authority did not merely settle individual cases but left its mark on Roman positive law itself.
Autor*in
Ido Israelowich
Geboren 1972; 2008 Promotion in Antiker Geschichte an der University of Oxford; 2021 Habilitation an der Universität Bayreuth; Leiter des Fachbereichs Klassische Altertumswissenschaften und Associate Professor an der Tel Aviv University.
Themen in »Forensic Experts and Roman Law«
ancient Rome ancient science civil engineers expert witnesses expertise forensic experts judicial recognition legal history legal institutions legal procedure midwives physicians Roman courts Roman law specialized knowledge