10 Outstanding Roman Law Books for You Now
Book ListsThe legal system of the Romans is the most influential of its kind from the ancient world.
Check out our curation of ten of the best books on Roman law. Links to purchase or find a copy in your library are available for each book listing. (Note: books are listed in reverse-chronological order).
For books on Roman civilization more generally, check out our Ancient Rome book list or see our other book lists.
1. Johnston, David. Roman Law in Context. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
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This book explains how Roman law worked for those who lived by it, by viewing it in the light of the society and economy in which it operated. Written in an accessible style with the minimum of legal technicality, the book is designed for students and teachers of Roman history as well as interested general readers. Topics covered include the family and inheritance, property and the use of land, business and commercial transactions, and litigation. In this second edition, all chapters have been extensively revised and updated, and a new chapter on crime and punishment has been included. The book ends with an epilogue covering the fate of Roman law in medieval and modern Europe. David Johnston is a lawyer practising in the courts and draws on his experience of law in practice to shape the work and provide new insights for his readers.
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David Johnston is a Queen’s Counsel who practises in Scotland mainly in the field of public law. He was previously Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christ’s College. He is an honorary professor at Edinburgh Law School and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His other publications include works on both Roman and modern law, in particular The Roman Law of Trusts (1988) and Prescription and Limitation (2nd ed., 2012).
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2. Plessis, Paul J. du. Borkowski’s Textbook on Roman Law. 6th edition. Oxford University Press, 2020.
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Borkowski’s Textbook on Roman Law is the leading contemporary textbook in the field of Roman law, and has been written with undergraduate students firmly in mind. The book provides a clear and highly engaging account of Roman private law and civil procedure, with coverage of all key topics, including the Roman legal system, and the law of persons, property, and obligations.
The book gives a comprehensive overview of both the historical context and modern relevance of Roman law today. Included are references to a wide range of scholarly texts, to ground the judicious account of Roman law firmly in contemporary scholarship. There are also examples from legal practice, as well as truncated timelines at the start of each chapter to illustrate how the law developed over time.
The book contains a wealth of learning features, including chapter summaries, diagrams and maps. A major feature of the book is the inclusion of translated extracts from the most important sources of Roman law: the Digest and the Institutes of Justinian. Annotated further reading sections at the end of each chapter act as a guide to further enquiry.
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Paul J. du Plessis, Professor of Roman Law, University of Edinburgh, School of Law
Paul J. du Plessis holds the chair of Roman law at the University of Edinburgh. He is a legal historian whose research focuses predominantly on the multifaceted and complex set of relationships between law and society in a historical context. His main field of research is Roman law (with specific reference to property, obligations and, to a lesser extent, persons and family). Within this field, he is mainly concerned with the contexts within which law operates and the extent to which modern socio-legal methodologies can be applied to historical material from the Roman period in order to further our understanding of Roman law. To that end, his work is mainly concerned with the formulation of a methodology for ‘law and society’ research with reference to the Roman Empire. In the context of his interest in law and society, his research also focuses on a further period where Roman legal principles were used to create law, namely the period of the European ius commune in the late Middle Ages.
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3. Plessis, Paul J. du, Clifford Ando, and Kaius Tuori, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society. Reprint edition. Oxford University Press, 2020.
publisher description
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society surveys the landscape of contemporary research and charts principal directions of future inquiry. More than a history of doctrine or an account of jurisprudence, the Handbook brings to bear upon Roman legal study the full range of intellectual resources of contemporary legal history, from comparison to popular constitutionalism, from international private law to law and society, thereby setting itself apart from other volumes as a unique contribution to scholarship on its subject.
The Handbook brings the study of Roman law into closer alignment and dialogue with historical, sociological, and anthropological research into law in other periods. It will therefore be of value not only to ancient historians and legal historians already focused on the ancient world, but to historians of all periods interested in law and its complex and multifaceted relationship to society.
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Paul J du Plessis, Professor of Roman Law, University of Edinburgh,Clifford Ando, David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor and Professor of Classics, History and Law, University of Chicago; and Research Fellow, Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa, ,Kaius Tuori, Associate Professor of European Intellectual History, University of Helsinki
Paul du Plessis is a legal historian whose research interests include Roman law, medieval interpretations of Roman law, Roman-Dutch law, the historical development of the civilian tradition in mixed jurisdictions, the relationship between law and history as well as between law and society in a historical context. He is a member of various organizations dedicated to the study of legal history, sometime webmaster of the Centre for Legal History at Edinburgh University and convener of the Edinburgh Roman Law Group. He is co-author of the Edinburgh Legal History Blog. He is the general editor (with Thomas McGinn) of the monograph series Oxford Studies in Roman Society and Law.
Clifford Ando is an historian of government, law, and religion specializing in the ancient Mediterranean between the late Hellenistic and late Roman periods. He has particular interests in contemporary social and political theory, public law, practices of legal interpretation, and metaphor and cognition.
Kaius Tuori is currently Associate Professor of European Intellectual History at the University of Helsinki. His research interests include legal history, Roman law, legal anthropology, classical archaeology, and their intellectual history. In addition to four books, his work has been published in Law, Culture and the Humanities, The Journal of Legal History, the Journal of Legal Pluralism, Revue internationale des droits de l’Antiquite and the Legal History Review. He holds a doctorate in Law and an MA in History from his studies at the universities of Helsinki, Finland, and La Sapienza in Rome, Italy.
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4. Gaius. The Institutes of Gaius. Translated by O. F. Robinson and W. M. Gordon. Bilingual edition. Bristol Classical Press, 2015.
Learn about Roman private law from an ancient Roman himself.
publisher description
Gaius was a Roman jurist of the 2nd century AD. His Institutes is an important legal textbook covering all the elements of Roman law. This volume contains a useful Introduction, English translation and the Latin text of Seckel and Kuebler. Its aim is to make the Institutes, one of the seminal works of Roman law, accessible to students with little or no Latin.
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Gaius
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5. Johnston, David. The Cambridge Companion to Roman Law. Edited by David Johnston. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
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This book reflects the wide range of current scholarship on Roman law. The essays, newly commissioned for this volume, cover the sources of evidence for classical Roman law, the elements of private law, as well as criminal and public law, and the second life of Roman law in Byzantium, in civil and canon law, and in political discourse from AD 1100 to the present. Roman law nowadays is studied in many different ways, which is reflected in the diversity of approaches in the essays. Some focus on how the law evolved in ancient Rome, others on its place in the daily life of the Roman citizen, still others on how Roman legal concepts and doctrines have been deployed through the ages. All of them are responses to one and the same thing: the sheer intellectual vitality of Roman law, which has secured its place as a central element in the intellectual tradition and history of the West.
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David Johnston is a Queen’s Counsel who practises at the Bar in Scotland, mainly in the fields of public and commercial law. He holds MA, PhD and LD degrees from the University of Cambridge. From 1993 to 1999 he was Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ’s College. He is currently an honorary professor at Edinburgh Law School. David Johnston is the author of many publications, including The Roman Law of Trusts (1988), Roman Law in Context (1999) and Prescription and Limitation, 2nd edition (2012).
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6. Riggsby, Andrew M. Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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In this book, Andrew Riggsby offers a survey of the main areas of Roman law, both substantive and procedural, and how the legal world interacted with the rest of Roman life. Emphasizing basic concepts, he recounts its historical development and focuses in particular on the later Republic and early centuries of the Roman Empire. The volume is designed as an introductory work, with brief chapters that will be accessible to college students with little knowledge of legal matters or Roman antiquity. The text is also free of technical language and Latin terminology. It can be used in courses on Roman law, Roman history, or comparative law, but it will also serve as a useful reference for more advanced students and scholars.
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Andrew Riggsby is Professor of Classics and of Art and Art History at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Crime and Community in Ciceronian Rome and Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words, which received the Association of American Publishers Professional Scholarly Publishing Division Award for Excellence in Classics and Ancient History in 2006.
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7. Harries, Jill. Law and Crime in the Roman World. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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What was crime in ancient Rome? Was it defined by law or social attitudes? How did damage to the individual differ from offences against the community as a whole? This book explores competing legal and extra-legal discourses in a number of areas, including theft, official malpractice, treason, sexual misconduct, crimes of violence, homicide, magic and perceptions of deviance. It argues that court practice was responsive to social change, despite the ingrained conservatism of the legal tradition, and that judges and litigants were in part responsible for the harsher operation of justice in Late Antiquity. Consideration is also given to how attitudes to crime were shaped not only by legal experts but also by the rhetorical education and practices of advocates, and by popular and even elite indifference to the finer points of law.
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Jill Harries is Professor of Ancient History in the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews.
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8. Bablitz, Leanne. Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom. London: Routledge, 2007.
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What would you see if you attended a trial in a courtroom in the early Roman empire? What was the behaviour of litigants, advocates, judges and audience?
It was customary for Roman individuals out of general interest to attend the various courts held in public places in the city centre and as such, the Roman courts held an important position in the Roman community on a sociological level as well as a litigious one.
This book considers many aspects of Roman courts in the first two centuries AD, both civil and criminal, and illuminates the interaction of Romans of every social group.
Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom is an essential resource for courses on Roman social history and Roman law as a historical phenomenon.
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Leanne Bablitz is Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where she teaches Imperial Roman History and Roman Law.
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9. Frier, Bruce W., Thomas A. J. McGinn, and Joel Lidov. A Casebook on Roman Family Law. Oxford University Press, 2003.
publisher description
The Roman household (familia) was in many respects dramatically different from the modern family. From the early Roman Empire (30 B.C. to about A.D. 250) there survive many legal sources that describe Roman households, often in the most intimate detail. The subject matter of these ancient sources includes marriage and divorce, the property aspects of marriage, the pattern of authority within households, the transmission of property between generations, and the supervision of Roman orphans.
This casebook presents 235 representative texts drawn largely from Roman legal sources, especially Justinian’s Digest. These cases and the discussion questions that follow provide a good introduction to the basic legal problems associated with the ordinary families of Roman citizens. The arrangement of materials conveys to students an understanding of the basic rules of Roman family law while also providing them with the means to question these rules and explore the broader legal principles that underlie them.
Included cases invite the reader to wrestle with actual Roman legal problems, as well as to think about Roman solutions in relation to modern law. In the process, the reader should gain confidence in handling fundamental forms of legal thinking, which have persisted virtually unchanged from Roman times until the present.
This volume also contains a glossary of technical terms, biographies of the jurists, basic bibliographies of useful secondary literature, and a detailed introduction to the scholarly topics associated with Roman family law.
A course based on this casebook should be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand better Roman social history, either as part of a larger Classical Civilization curriculum or as a preparation for law school.
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Bruce W. Frier is Professor of Classics and Roman Law at the University of Michigan.
Thomas A.J. McGinn is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Vanderbilt University.
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10. Crook, J. A. Law and Life of Rome, 90 B.C.–A.D. 212. Reprint edition. Cornell University Press, 1984.
publisher description
It is about Roman law in its social context, an attempt to strengthen the bridge between two spheres of discourse about ancient Rome by using the institutions of the law to enlarge understanding of the society and bringing the evidence of the social and economic facts to bear on the rules of law.
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John Anthony Crook FBA was a professor of ancient history at the University of Cambridge and an authority on the law and life of ancient Rome. He wrote several chapters for the Cambridge Ancient History and was an accomplished linguist.
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