In recent years the study and teaching of Roman law has found an increasing presence in U.S. colleges and universities.
Two textbooks that have helped to stimulate and sustain this interest are Professor Bruce W. Frier’s A Casebook on the Roman Law of Delict (Scholars Press, 1989) and A Casebook on Roman Family Law (APA Classical Resources series, no.
5: Oxford University Press, 2004), the latter co-authored with Professor Thomas A.J. McGinn. Both of these texts are modeled after the German-language casebooks by Professor Herbert Hausmaninger (University of Vienna) on the Roman law of contracts and Roman property law, respectively. The latter, entitled Casebook zum römischen Sachenrecht, is currently in its 10th edition (MANZ Verlag, 2003), now co-authored with Professor Richard Gamauf (University of Vienna). The book before you is an authorized translation of that edition.I originally prepared this translation for use in a Roman Law course that I teach in the Law School and in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. Subsequently, it seemed that the book might be of use in a wider range of instructional settings. To make that more practical, I have added a Translator’s Introduction that provides an overview of the history of Roman law and the complex nature of its relationship to the Anglo-American legal tradition. Supplementary notes and translations have also been introduced throughout the text in order to clarify terminology and concepts that might be unfamiliar to readers not trained in the civil law tradition. Longer supplements are footnoted as “Translator’s notes.” Shorter glosses are simply embedded in the text and set off with square brackets.[1] All glosses in parentheses originally appeared in parentheses in the German source-text. Finally, for easier reference, a “Translator’s Glossary” of Latin Terms and Phrases has been added at the end of the book.
I am grateful to the American Philological Association and Professor Sander Goldberg, editor of the APA Textbook Series, for supporting this project. I also thank Professor Boudewijn Sirks, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford University, for serving as one of the manuscript referees and making excellent suggestions for improvements to it. He is not, of course, responsible for any errors that remain.
George A. Sheets
Minneapolis, July 2011