Law and Empire provides a comparative view of legal practices in Asia and Europe, from Antiquity to the eighteenth century. It relates the main principles of legal thinking in Chinese, Islamic, and European contexts to practices of lawmaking and adjudication. In particular, it shows how legal procedure and legal thinking could be used in strikingly different ways. Rulers could use law effectively as an instrument of domination; legal specialists built their identity, livelihood and social status on their knowledge of law; and non-elites exploited the range of legal fora available to them. This volume shows the relevance of legal pluralism and the social relevance of litigation for premodern power structures.
The study of the Roman Empire has changed dramatically in the last century, with significant emphasis now placed on understanding the experiences of subject populations, rather than a sole focus on the Roman imperial elites. Local experiences, and interactions between periphery and centre, are an intrinsic component in our understanding of the empire's function over and against the earlier, top-down model. But where does law fit into this new, decentralized picture of empire? This volume brings together internationally renowned scholars from both legal and historical backgrounds to study the operation of law in each region of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Egypt, from the first century BCE to the end of the third century CE. Regional specificities are explored in detail alongside the emergence of common themes and activities in a series of case studies that together reveal a new and wide-ranging picture of law in the Roman Empire, balancing the practicalities of regional variation with the ideological constructs of law and empire.
"As he illuminates the relationship between the imperial government and the empire's provinces, Ando deepens our understanding of one of the most striking phenomena in the history of government."--BOOK JACKET.
Die bisherige Forschung geht davon aus, dass das islamische Recht von unabhängigen Juristen entwickelt wurde. Dabei sind mitunter Einflüsse aus fremden Rechtssystemen eingeräumt worden, doch eine gezielte Rezeption galt stets als ausgeschlossen. In einer Vergleichsanalyse, die auf der Prämisse einer massiven Interaktion der Kulturen in jener Zeit basiert, lässt sich nun nachweisen, dass das erste monumentale Rechtswerk im Islam, die Zāhir ar-riwāya des Šaybānī, strukturell und inhaltlich auf dem Rhēton beruht – einer griechischen Version jenes Regelwerkes, das später in Europa als Corpus Iuris Civilis Verbreitung fand. Inspiriert durch die byzantinische Reichsrechtsidee kodifizierten muslimische Staatsjuristen in Bagdad das islamische „Reichsrecht“, das aber angesichts der Opposition frommer Überlieferer durch Traditionen legitimiert werden musste. Nachdem sich das Reichsrecht in weiten Teilen des Kalifats etabliert hatte, bewirkte der revolutionäre Triumph der Orthodoxie Mitte des 9. Jahrhunderts dessen Übergang in ein Juristenrecht, das nun in den Händen unabhängiger Gelehrter lag.
This work deals with the law and legal theory in classical and medieval Islam. Among the topics covered are: non-analogical arguments in Sunni juridical Qiyas; logic and formal arguments in Sunni jurisprudence; inductive corroboration; and al-Shafi'i and his influence on Islamic jurisprudence.