HISTORY OF ROMAN LAW

The present course, devoted to the study of Roman legal history, will trace the line of Roman penal law development from ancient times to the age of the Late Roman Empire. We will consider the substantial aspects of criminal law as well as the forms of the process. In this way we will highlight the close connection existing in the Roman experience among the cases in point of crime and the juridical forms of the application of penalties. That together with the objective of understanding the peculiarities and the progressive formation of the relative study, highlighting the originality and the degree of awareness achieved in the process of elaborating the outlines and problems subject to successive attention on the part of penal science. In particular, attention will be placed on understanding those aspects, relative to the multiple connections between the political-constitutional structure of society and criminal repression in all its implications, specifically those purely technical-juridical, which still today offer a starting point for worthwhile reflection. For systematic reasons, the course will take place in two parts: one general, relative to the basically substantial penal law institutions and the penal procedure, and a special part dedicated to the study of a single criminal person and in particular of a few sexual crimes taken into consideration in light of the input supplied by legal reflections and imperial regulations. The study of legal history will ensure the students the awareness of the nature of the institutes, of their being rooted in ancient past stilla live and rich of suggestion to regulate present issues.