The Making of Modern Property
Reinventing Roman Law in Europe and its Peripheries 1789–1950

Draws from a wealth of primary sources to outline how classical Roman property law was reinvented by liberal nineteenth-century jurists.

Anna di Robilant (Author)

9781108494779, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 July 2023

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.724 kg

In this original intellectual history, Anna di Robilant traces the history of one of the most influential legal, political, and intellectual projects of modernity: the appropriation of Roman property law by liberal nineteenth-century jurists to fit the purposes of modern Europe. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been translated into English, di Robilant outlines how a broad network of European jurists reinvented the classical Roman concept of property to support the process of modernisation. By placing this intellectual project within its historical context, she shows how changing class relations, economic policies and developing ideologies converged to produce the basis of modern property law. Bringing these developments to the twentieth century, this book demonstrates how this largely fabricated version of Roman property law shaped and continues to shape debates concerning economic growth, sustainability, and democratic participation.

Part I. Introduction: The Romanist-bourgeois property culture: dominium, the social function and resources
1. What Roman antiquity had to offer: a scientific method and a vast inventory of property concepts
2. The foundations of Romanist-bourgeois property: Robert Joseph Pothier and the transition from medieval 'divided dominium' to modern absolute dominium
3. Crafting Romanist-bourgeois property: Roman antiquity, political reaction, a rising bourgeoisie and scientism
4. Reform, not revolution: modernizing property in Germany
5. The tensions of absolute property
6. Roman dominium in the republics of Latin America: property, nationhood, race and economic development
7. The social critics: the critique of absolute dominium and the retrieval of the Roman social doctrines
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Comparative law [LAM]