The regula as a rhetorical device in Roman law

What is it about?

A close contextual reading of twenty regulae iuris in title D. 50.17 of Justinian’s Digest reveals that they are not legal maxims, as they have long been held to be, but rather rhetorical devices the Roman jurists used to support their responsa, opinions. on thorny legal problems. Even a responsum by Scaevola, often viewed as the archetypal jurist and the alleged founder of Roman legal science, and the oldest surviving regula, the regula Catoniana, are in fact rhetorical arguments rather than normative rules.

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Why is it important?

It calls into question both the entrenched presumption that Roman law and rhetoric are two unrelated disciplines and the modern image of Roman law as a science. Sometimes these regulae contain arguments that do not logically fit the perceived system of Roman law or that are even entirely unrelated to law. They show how, when law failed, the Roman jurists turned to rhetoric to make a compelling case.