van den Berge on Roman Dictatorship: Emergency Government and the Limits of Legality @berge_lukas @UniUtrecht

Lukas van den Berge, Utrecht University Faculty of Law, has published Roman Dictatorship: Emergency Government and the Limits of Legality as a Utrecht University School of Law Research Paper. Here is the abstrac

Doctrinal approaches to Roman law are currently often supplemented by contextual legal-historical scholarship that aims to expose Roman law’s connections with its socio-political, religious and broader intellectual environment. This article draws attention to the relevance of such contextual research for modern legal problems. An analysis of the Roman dictatorship and its reception history in legal and constitutional scholarship serves as a case in point. Contrary to common belief, the far-reaching powers of the Roman dictator – acting to save the Roman Republic in times of great peril – were controlled by informal rather than formal legal restraints. A corrected understanding of the Roman dictatorship is arguably not only important for an appropriate assessment of the Roman constitution itself, but also for current debates on the limits of legality in times of emergency.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.