Law and Order in Ancient Athens

This book draws on contemporary legal scholarship to explain why Athens was a remarkably well-ordered society.

Adriaan Lanni (Author)

9780521198806, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 August 2016

240 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm, 0.47 kg

'In this masterful, deeply textured, in-the-round account of ancient Athenian law and social practice, Adriaan Lanni explores a deep mystery about ancient democracy: how did the Athenian state, with its limited coercive capacity, achieve a peaceful and productive social order? Lanni elucidates how law's expressive function dynamically interacted with formal Athenian legal institutions, and with litigants' strategic deployment of extra-statutory norms. As a result, we understand better than ever before how the Athenians successfully deterred socially destructive behavior, how they survived civil war, and how bold courtroom arguments can change social behavior through creatively reinterpreting the relationship between law and norm. Lanni's outstanding legal sociology reveals anew the startling similarities and discontinuities between ancient and modern approaches to democracy and rule of law.' Josiah Ober, Stanford University, California

The classical Athenian 'state' had almost no formal coercive apparatus to ensure order or compliance with law: there was no professional police force or public prosecutor, and nearly every step in the legal process depended on private initiative. And yet Athens was a remarkably peaceful and well-ordered society by both ancient and contemporary standards. Why? Law and Order in Ancient Athens draws on contemporary legal scholarship to explore how order was maintained in Athens. Lanni argues that law and formal legal institutions played a greater role in maintaining order than is generally acknowledged. The legal system did encourage compliance with law, but not through the familiar deterrence mechanism of imposing sanctions for violating statutes. Lanni shows how formal institutions facilitated the operation of informal social control in a society that was too large and diverse to be characterized as a 'face-to-face community' or 'close-knit group'.

Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: 1. Informal social control and its limits
2. Law enforcement and its limits
Part II: 3. The expressive effect of statutes
4. Enforcing norms in court
5. Court argument and the shaping of norms
6. Transitional justice in Athens: law, courts, norms
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], History: earliest times to present day [HBL], European history [HBJD]