David Johnston
Amazon Price: $74.13
List Price: $80.00
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Cambridge University Press
Amazon Marketplace: 27
new & used starting at $59.90
|
Buy at Amazon.com
|
Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Ancient -> Rome
Subjects -> History -> Ancient -> General
Subjects -> History -> Ancient -> General AAS
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
A very informative, but somewhat dry book 4 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.
Johnston's book is basically organized into three sections, thought there is no mention of this structure in the table of contents. The first section introduces the reader to the sources of Roman law (how the law was made, and who made it). The second section discusses the substantive law of family, property, and contracts. The third section discusses litigation (or how the laws discussed in section two worked in practice). At the end of the book, there is a very good glossary of Roman legal terms, followed by an extremely helpful discussion of the Roman legal literature for the serious student of Roman Law to pursue.Johnston's book does a great job of packing a lot of information into very few pages, but often at the expense of several rereads by the reader. The information is accurate and well-researched, thought it could have been presented better (see next paragraph). However, whether you're new to Roman law, or have studied the subject in depth, you will come away with a better grasp of Rome's legal system, her institutions, and her laws.
Now, for the criticism. I believe that Johnston's book would have been much better if he would have followed his discussion of the sources of Roman law (section I) with the section on litigation (section III, which discusses how the law operated in practice), followed then by a discussion of the substantive law. Johnston's organization, by not doing this, presented the reader with an entire book of disparate and seemingly disjunctive technical material without a mechanism for synthesizing it until the reader reached Johnston's last chapter on litigation. This was the chapter that tied everything together, and it should have been discussed earlier. Only upon reading this last chapter did I finally understood why everything Johnston had told me before was important, and because of this, it looks like I'll be reading this book again to fully appreciate the impact of the previous chapters.
Therefore, I would recommend reading chapter one, then the last chapter, and then the material on the substantive law following the first chapter. Doing so, I guarantee, will save you a lot of head scratching and will enable you to appreciate this book, which is otherwise very good.
Personally, while this book is accessible to the beginner, I would recommend that a reader unfamiliar with Roman law begin with Nicholas' "An Introduction to Roman Law" or Crook's "Law and Life of Rome," both of which are excellent and will better prepare you for Johnston's book.
Editorial Review:
This book explains the rules of Roman law in the light of the society and economy in which it operated. The main topics discussed are the family and inheritance, property and the use of land, commercial transactions and the management of businesses, litigation and how easily the Roman citizen could assert his or her legal rights in practice. The book involves a minimum of legal technicality and is intended to be accessible to students and teachers of Roman history.
