Department of Roman Law

Head of Department Evelyn Höbenreich

The origin of our idea of law lies in Rome. The development and spread of Roman legal culture was a centuries-long process with a global impact. As lawyers know, its instruments are a legacy from antiquity in terms of terminology, structure and content. Without the Corpus Iuris Civilis, compiled under Emperor Justinian and so named since humanism, there would be no private law systems as we take them for granted today. More generally, there would also be no legal discourse of the kind that characterizes our scholarship and practice. The members of the department stand for this proven tradition, but also continue the school of "Ancient Legal History" founded in Graz, which not only brings public-institutional law or the criminal law of the Romans into the focus of research. Publications from the Leda series.