Person and Individual in Roman Law

Abstract

This thesis posits the existence of an individualistic jurisprudence in classical Roman law. That jurisprudence conceives the legal person, rather than a person’s clan or other political, social, or familial grouping, as what Henry Maine called the primary ‘unit of which civil laws take account’.

It is not argued that the connotations now commonly understood for the word ‘individualism’ were similarly understood by the Romans, or that they celebrated individualism as a moral or political virtue. Rather, it was in the sphere of private law that the individual – free or sometimes even slave – found identity and freedom in his or her commercial dealings with other individuals.

The individualistic tendency reveals itself in various aspects of Roman law, many of which are examined in this thesis within the now familiar trichotomy of life (the protection of one’s livelihood through the law of delict), liberty (one’s freedom of private acquisition through contract), and property (the freedom of private disposal of one’s own things); all of which individualistic tendencies were rationalised and intensified in the universalisation of Roman law throughout the empire. The legal concept of the person constitutes the ancient Roman contribution to the moral and political concept of the individual.