Ius Commune Podcast

This episode explores Ari Z. Bryen’s The Judgment of the Provinces: The Roman Empire and the Origins of Law and Society , a provocative reassessment of the relationship between law, society, and imperial power in the Roman world. Challenging traditional views of Roman law as a centralized system imposed from above, Bryen argues that law functioned as a shared language through which provincial popu...

This episode explores the relationship between Hugo Grotius’s legal thought and the emergence of international law in the context of early modern European expansion. Rather than presenting Grotius as a purely abstract theorist, the conversation highlights his role as a legal advisor to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and shows how his ideas were shaped by concrete commercial and political confl...

This episode examines Merav Haklai’s Money in Imperial Rome: Legal Diversity and Systemic Complexity , focusing on her central claim that money in the Roman world was not merely coinage but a legal and cognitive framework shaped by juristic reasoning. Rather than treating the Roman economy as either fully “modern” or socially embedded and pre-market, Haklai shows how Roman private law actively str...

This episode explores a provocative rethinking of Roman law—not as a coherent, rational system that governed everyday life, but as a powerful form of political imagination. Moving beyond the traditional image inherited from Justinian and later jurists, the discussion shows how legal texts functioned as symbolic tools through which Romans sought to imagine order, justice, and stability in an empire...

What happened when Roman law—crafted for citizens and slaves of the ancient world—was revived to justify colonial domination centuries later? In this episode, we explore how early modern thinkers like Hugo Grotius reinterpreted Roman legal categories to structure Dutch imperial rule, and how these ideas took shape in the colonial reality of Curaçao. Legal historians Jacob Giltaij and Christine Mer...

In this episode, host and guest delve into the challenges and fascination of late Roman law and codification . Professor Peter Riedlberger —a leading historian of Late Antiquity at the University of Bamberg and principal investigator of two ERC projects ( Acts of the Ecumenical Councils and AntCoCo: Understanding Late Antique Top-Down Communication )—explains how imperial constitutions and codices...

Emilia talks with with Prof. Kaius Tuori about how Roman law served as a unifying force in post-war Europe. Prof. Tuori traces Roman law's role back to German legal scholars exiled in Britain during the Nazi regime. After the war, Roman law's legacy of shared legal principles offered a foundation for reiminaging Europe, both politically and legally.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Peter Candy, Assistant Professor of Civil Law and Fellow of St. Catherine’s College at the University of Cambridge, about his book Ancient Maritime Loan Contracts (University of Michigan Press), which examines the commercial financing of the maritime trade in ancient Greece and Rome. It’s a period that contains the roots of modern shipping law, finance, insurance, a...

In this episode, Emilia sits down with Professor Gialdroni to discuss medieval commercial law and the lex mercatoria. They also discuss Professor Gialdroni's latest project on the topic, including her innovative use of language.

A deep dive into the study of papyrological legal history--a field both old and new. Enjoy!

Professors Caroline Humfress and Patrick Olivelle join the podcast to discuss their new project, "The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law."

A discussion with Professor Ando about non-Justinianic legal sources in ancient Rome.

In this episode, we explore the project “The Making of Local Legal Cultures under Rome,” featuring an interview with Professor's Yair Furstenberg, from the Hebrew university in Jerusalem. The project examines how communities in the Greek East negotiated their legal identities amid Roman imperial authority, revealing that law was not a vacuum but a contested space where local customs and Roman prac...