On 19 October, we inaugurated the working sessions of our DEFINITIO project with a meeting in which the members of the previous project explained to our new travelling companions the iter followed, the objectives achieved and, above all, the learning obtained from that first experience. The meeting took place at the University of Girona, where we were warmly welcomed by Professor José Luis Linares, a member of the project. We had the opportunity to discuss the following topics:
- Carmen Palomo Pinel: ‘The definitions of the Roman jurists. Objectives and perspectives for research’.
- Juan Manuel Blanch Nougués: ‘Classes of definitions and their identification in the texts of the Roman jurists of Justinian's Digest: some interpretative problems’.
- Ana Mª Rodríguez González: ‘Rhetorical definition and jurisprudential reasoning. Analysis of two school cases’.
- Jakob Stagl: ‘Definition and codification’.
The presentations were followed by a fruitful dialogue in which interesting questions such as these arose:
What historiographical assumptions lie behind the negative judgement of the first half of the 20th century on the quality of the definitions of the Roman jurists? Could a certain ‘romanticised’ vision of the Roman jurist by authors such as Pringsheim, in which the creation of law was more the fruit of inspiration than of technique, have influenced a reluctance to recognise the weight of definitions in this process of creation?
How far should we extend the fields of our future database so that all relevant information is collected and organised, while allowing enough flexibility to collect definitions that are difficult to classify?
There are definitions that change their function, even the meaning of the definiendum, depending on the Palingenesque, Edictal, Justinian context. Attention!
Does it make sense to approach this subject by taking into account the individuality of the jurist, or do the definitions form a collective collection without any significant particularities?
We do not want to make a mere ‘museum’ of definitions, but a classification that will allow us to obtain quantitative and qualitative data that will help us to better understand the reasoning and argumentation of Roman jurists.
Why is there a conspicuous absence of definitions of certain key legal terms, e.g. ‘property’?
It is undoubtedly an ‘oceanic’ project...
Our next stop: reading and commenting on basic works on the definitions of the Roman jurists at our next meeting.
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