Lawyers and the Civil Law Tradition

Abstract

This chapter first addresses the question of who the Roman jurists and lawyers of the classical period were, and how they were trained, before turning to the role of professors and their relations with lawyers. It argues that the roots of the Latin American legal tradition lie more in the academically sophisticated Bologna of Irnerius (1050–1130) than in the Rome of Papinian (c.140–212), because law today is studied at the universities, it is mostly a knowledge contained in books, and professors are important legal actors. Papinian's Rome, in contrast, had no universities or law schools, therefore experience and one-to-one learning was paramount, and law was not a bookish knowledge. Roman law, which was practically reinvented in each era, has provided today's lawyers with a basic conceptual design and a system of beliefs that is not historically true but which has undeniable practical value.