LONDON ROMAN LAW GROUP: 

Carriage by Sea

by
Dr Paul J. du Plessis
University of Edinburgh

on Friday 1 March 2013, from 5-7pm

Venue:
Keeton Room
UCL Law Faculty
Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens
London WC1H 0EG

About this talk: 
This paper is concerned with the Roman law of maritime transport of goods. It will explore the legal rules governing this form of transport of goods and the management structures employed by owners of maritime vessels to facilitate the transport of cargo. Using legal and archeological evidence, it will be argued that the legal solutions created by the Roman jurists were also informed by ‘real life’ problems, as opposed to purely intellectual concerns, and that more attention needs to paid to these ‘contexts’ in order to enhance modern understanding of this area of Roman private law.

About the speaker:
Paul J. du Plessis is a legal historian whose research focuses predominantly on the multifaceted and complex set of relationships between law and society in a historical context. His main field of research is Roman law. Within this field, he is mainly concerned with the contexts within which law operates and the extent to which modern socio-legal methodologies can be applied to historical material from the Roman period in order to further our understanding of Roman law. To that end, his work is mainly concerned with the formulation of a methodology for ‘law and society’ research with reference to the Roman Empire.

He is a member of various organisations dedicated to the study of legal history, sometime webmaster of the Centre for Legal History at Edinburgh University and convener of the Edinburgh Roman Law Group. He is also a founding member of the International Advisory Board of the Alan Watson Foundation hosted by the University of Belgrade.

He is the general editor (with Thomas McGinn) of the monograph series Oxford Studies in Roman Society and Law.