‘Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark?’

On Authenticity Deficit and the Continuity of Roman Legal Scholarship in the context of Doctrinal History of Causality Based on Dig. 9.2.51 Following Wolfgang Ernst’s Book as a Programme Manifesto

Abstract

Abstract: Wolfgang Ernst, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford, has published a unique, multi-functional monograph in 2019. The book not only deeply explores the doctrinal history of delictual causation going back some eight centuries on the basis of the most authoritative Digesta loci (Iul. D. 9, 2, 51; Ulp. D. 9, 2, 11, 1-3; Ulp. D. 9, 2, 15, 1), and not only develops an autonomous novel position in the issue, but it serves further, more far-reaching purposes, which are much larger than the research object itself. The detailed investigation of the topic, which is in itself monographic, serves merely as a tool (test case) in relation to the main goals of the volume, which are to draw conclusions about the function of Roman Legal Scholarship, its methodology, its possible aims, its capacity for renewal, its failure to achieve a paradigm shift, and the sociological factors of its researchers’ communities. By these means, the book provides the future generations of Roman legal scholars with a programme (manifesto?) that may, through an authentic historical interpretation of pure Roman legal thought, even be capable, though not explicitly intended by the author, of making Roman Legal Scholarship an applied jurisprudence again but this time without Roman law as a living source of law. The opus may thus become one of the most revered works of the greatest European jurists for centuries if its value is realised by future generations. It is this recognition that the present paper seeks to support.