Conciliation agreement in the Roman law (sociocultural context)

Abstract

The article provides insight into the content of the conciliation agreement as an alternative to settle the legal disputes based on the analysis of the key strategic foundations of the Quirite culture and provisions of the law of Ancient Rome. A special emphasis is placed on the fact that the extrajudicial, pre-judicial, and in some cases in-tra-judicial methods of the settlement of legal disputes are nowadays given a high status in the legal environment that confirms the general tendency to the humanization and democratization of the judicial proceedings. The article substantiates the necessity of going back to the historical context of appearance and formation of the conciliation agreement as a legal institute to improve the understanding of the nature and mechanism of this alternative method of dispute settlement, since the Roman law was and still is a foundation of modern legal systems of the European states. The stages of the development of conciliation agreement as an alternative method of dispute settlement were studied against the background of the culture of Ancient Rome and the main characteristic features of this institute were addressed, mainly: voluntary involvement (the parties pass a voluntary decision on reconciliation), alternativeness (the parties have to choose between the judicial, extra-judicial and pre-judicial dispute settlement), uncertainty (of the party or the party to the dispute is uncertain about the court decision in its favor), compromise (reaching an agreement, the parties arrive at a compromise in certain issues). In this case, it is emphasized that initially to settle the dispute extrajudicially, the Romans did not need any third parties (mediators). Following from the article, the conciliation agreement in the Roman law has formed as a contract, i.e. at its initial stage, it was the material law institute (contract) with the procedural consequences. Within the national sociocultural context, the application of conciliation agreement as an alternative method of dispute settlement is a way of searching for the new efficient methods of settlement of inter-individual relations. The research methodology is represented by a set of philosophical and general scientific methods. Determinants of which are comparative and hermeneutic, as well as socio-cultural and axiological approaches