Lecture
Lecture Professor Wolfgang Ernst: The Slave Killed Twice - a Legal Riddle and its European History
- Date
- Friday 21 February 2020
- Time
- Explanation
- 17:30 hrs Reception in A3 corridor - 18:15 hrs Start lecture B0.41
- Location
-
Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden - Room
- B0.41
It is a great honour to announce that our next lecture will be held by one of the most prominent scholars of our time in the field of legal history. On Friday 21 February, Professor Wolfgang Ernst, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford and fellow of All Souls College, will be speaking about a famous case from Justinian's Digest regarding the liability of two consecutive attackers. When one person mortally wounds a slave, whilst a second person finishes the job and kills him off, who is liable? And to what extent? The Digest offers contradicting answers to this question. The lecture will focus especially on the European reception of this ambiguity.
'The Slave Killed Twice - a Legal Riddle and its European History'.
For the antinomy between D. 9,2,51 and D. 9,2,11,3, a ‘cause célèbre’ of Roman law scholarship, the contributions between ca. 1200 and 2018 have been collected for quantitative analyses. Can one identify mega-trends, find ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the development? Where are continuities and breaks in the evolution of interpretations? What were the changing fashions of interpretation, blind alleys, lasting developments? How has this evolution coloured today’s approaches? In a second part, both texts will be revisited in an exercise of close reading.
The lecture is open to anyone interested in the subject, and will take place at 18.15 hrs in room B0.41. There will be a reception before the lecture, starting at 17.30 hrs, which you are also more than welcome to join. You will find us on the third floor of the KOG, right above the restaurant, in the Moot Court corridor.
