Legacies of the Sacred in Private Law: Roman Civic Religion, Property, and Contract

• In Event: 557 - Theory Section Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. From Empirics to Theory

Abstract

This article revisits Emile Durkheim’s classic argument for the social foundations of property and contract law. Drawing on recent scholarship in Roman religion and law, I argue that there is a core of truth in Durkheim’s theoretical account. Categories and conceptions of the sacred do inform property and contract law, as Durkheim argued. However, rather than being rooted in a universal process of development from animistic religion to secularized, ethical religion, the process of development is historically bound up with the particularities (and peculiarities) of Republican and Imperial Rome, some of which were passed on to the Christian Church, and carried forward to the modern nation-state.

Author

• Laura R. Ford, Bard College