Ius civile in artem redigere: authority, method and argument in Roman legal science

Abstract

Norm-rationality and authority-based arguments furnish sufficient grounds for legitimizing the activity of professional lawyers and for justifying their decision-propositions whenever there is a state of evaluative identification between the holders of the norm-giving power and the legal profession. This was the case with respect to Roman legal science. Its protagonists were originally members of Rome's ruling aristocratic elite. But during the imperial age the jurists relied increasingly on the power of the emperor whom they were compelled to serve. This paper comments on the development of Roman legal science understood as a move towards a normativist version of legal positivism based on an epistemology and methodology in which law is a set of rules sufficiently justified by reference to the will of the legislator - in the Imperial Age the will of the emperor.