1. Write an essay in which you investigate the shift in jurisprudential thought from
Greece to Rome. (10)
- Failure of the city-state (idea of city-state is false)
- The withdrawal and protest of the Epicureans and the Cynics. Epicureans (States are
formed for security). Cynics (wise man ought to be completely self-sufficient)
- The social philosophy of the Epicureans – individualism. Stoics (natural world is rationally
ordered).
- The Cynics’ views on equality of mankind.
- The individual and the universal community.
- The individual person has a worth hat others are bound to respect.
- Stoic ethical theory and Cicero’s views on mankind endowed with reason.
- The Stoic world-state and natural law theory.
- Ethics (no action is right or wrong)
- Role of the Roman lawyers.
- Roman legal theory reflects a turn towards democratic government - the concept of the
social contract;
- Epicureanism and Cynicism contributed - together with Stoicism - to humanising law e.g.
the relationships of authority viz. masters and slaves, husband and wife and parents and
children.
- The emphasis on individualism, reason, cosmopolitanism and a universal humanity
prepared the way for human rights cultures.
2. Critically analyse the emergence of those theories focusing on the universal
community rather than on the individual in the Roman natural law theory. (10)
- Definition of determinism
- Division of morally indifferent actions
- Emergence of rationalism (decline in metaphysical assumptions)
- Natural equality of all human beings
- Law as binding all rational beings into a world community
- Individual versus Universal community
- Humanitas
- Ius gentium
- Stoic ethical theory
- The world state
- Natural law for Stoics (right reason)
- Definition of rationalism
1
, Roman influence
1. “Justice is the fixed and abiding disposition to give to every man his right. The
precepts of law are as follows: to live honourably, to injure no one, to give to every man
his own. Jurisprudence is a knowledge of things human and divine, the science of the
just and the unjust.” Analyse Ulpian’s statement in the context of the contribution of
Roman natural law jurisprudence to the Western idea of justice. (10)
- Ulpianus : Law is fundamental basis, not only an idea
- Ius gentium
- Cicero (universal law of nature as right reason)
- Cicero on need for state to be guided by strict demands of justice
- The Roman lawyers (man-made law but law of nature as the source of morality)
- Slavery & Equality
- Cicero & Roman lawyers on “authority of the ruler is derived from the people”
- Digest
- Institutes
- People as corporate entity
- The sources of law (popular assembly (leges), authorised part of the people (plebescita),
decree of Senate (senatus consulta), decree of Emperor (constitutiones), or edict of an
ordinance-issuing official)
- Legal competence and rights of state
- The rejection of the idea of the state as the highest agency of moral perfection
- Important natural law distinctions made by Stoics:
- Eternal law, is law of reason rules universe
- Human reason, emanation of cosmic reason, rules lives of men as right reason
- Man’s law, natural law, is partaking of the eternal law (applies to all men)
- Areas of human activity where nature is indifferent man-made law
2. In which respects can the natural law jurisprudence of the Stoics and the Roman
lawyers be said to represent a development preparing the way for human rights
jurisprudence? Also consider the role of justice in this regard. (10)
- The Roman lawyers (man-made law but law of nature as the source of morality)
- Natural law and equality
- Discrimination against the law of nature
- The Roman family evidencing humanitarian law approach
- Lex Julia de adulteriis
- Augustus on patria potestas
- Edict of Caracalla in AD 212 (citizenship rights)
- Three notions of government (authority from the people, exercised by warrant of law,
justified on moral grounds)
2
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