Johnson, Allan Chester, Paul Robinson Coleman-Norton and Frank Card Bourne. Clyde Pharr, General Editor. Ancient Roman Statutes: A Translation with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Index. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961. xxxi, 290 pp. 9" x 12." Reprinted 2003 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-291-3. Hardcover. $150. * A collection of documents in translation based on a collation of Roman laws collected from the editions of Bruns, Girard and Riccobono. Laws gathered from other secondary sources, such as ancient authors' writings and from modern scholars' editions of inscriptions and of papyri, are also included. This volume is Volume II of The Corpus of Roman Law (Corpus Juris Romani), General Editor, Clyde Pharr. (Volume I: The Theodosian Code is also published in reprint by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.)

This book presents the legislation that formed the basis of Roman law - The Laws of the Twelve Tables. These laws, formally promulgated in 449 BC, consolidated earlier traditions and established enduring rights and duties of Roman citizens. The Tables were created in response to agitation by the plebeian class, who had previously been excluded from the higher benefits of the Republic. Despite previously being unwritten and exclusively interpreted by upper-class priests, the Tables became highly regarded and formed the basis of Roman law for a thousand years. This comprehensive sequence of definitions of private rights and procedures, although highly specific and diverse, provided a foundation for the enduring legal system of the Roman Empire.

Comprehensive and accessible, this book offers a concise synthesis of the evolution of the law in Western Europe, from ancient Rome to the beginning of the twentieth century. It situates law in the wider framework of Europe’s political, economic, social and cultural developments.

Among the best-known and most esteemed people known from antiquity is the Babylonian king Hammurabi. His fame and reputation are due to the collection of laws written under his patronage. This book offers a new interpretation of the Laws of Hammurabi. Ancient scribes would demonstrate their legal flair by composing statutes on a set of traditional cases, articulating what they deemed just and fair. The scribe of the Laws of Hammurabi advanced beyond earlier scribes in articulating legal thinking. The tradition that inspired the Laws of Hammurabi continued outside of Mesopotamia. It influenced biblical law and may have shaped Greek and Roman law.

There is no other published book in English studying the constitution of the Roman Republic as a whole. Yet the Greek historian Polybius believed that the constitution was a fundamental cause of the exponential growth of Rome's empire. He regarded the Republic as unusual in two respects: first, because it functioned so well despite being a mix of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy; secondly, because the constitution was the product of natural evolution rather than the ideals of a lawgiver. Even if historians now seek more widely for the causes of Rome's rise to power, the importance and influence of her political institutions remains. The reasons for Rome's power are both complex, on account of the mix of elements, and flexible, inasmuch as they were not founded on written statutes but on unwritten traditions reinterpreted by successive generations. Knowledge of Rome's political institutions is essential both for ancient historians and for those who study the contribution of Rome to the republican tradition of political thought from the Middle Ages to the revolutions inspired by the Enlightenment.