Free Roman Law study aids

By | 13 June 2008

While the technical issues around BIA are still being resolved, here is a reminder of some free resources, available on-line.

Misha or La Maison Inter-Universitaire des Sciences de l’Homme (University of Strasbourg) hosts a platform Bases de données hébergées par la MISHA via which you can access two free online resources which may prove useful for your studies.
 (Clicking the Union Jack gives you an English interface should you need it.)
The second resource on the list is BAHR or Bulletin analytique d’histoire romaine. Doing the simplest of searches – putting “ius” alone as a title search – produced 19 hits ranging in date from 1990 to 2007. You are given several options on this list of results page: selecting as many as you think useful then either printing your selection, or saving them to your computer (as xml or Excel spreadsheet), or adding to your basket, or emailing them. Selecting and then viewing (clicking the binoculars) a result gives you not just a fuller citation (hovering your mouse over the abbreviated journal title reveals the full title – very useful for searching OLIS!), and an abstract, but also hyper-linked related search terms, which you can follow up. (This more detailed result can only be printed or saved to your computer.) The My Searches – history option allows you to combine your previous queries (using boolean AND, OR & NOT) and run another search.
Fifth on the list is  DRANT (DRoits ANTiques) a bibliography from the Centre for the Documentation of Ancient Law (CDDA), Paris.  The database started in 1960 and now contains over 52,000 references (according to details on the site). The database combs books, over 400 journals (both French and other languages), conference proceedings, collected studies etc – and claims to grow by some 2000 entries per year. Remember that its focus is wider than just Roman law, including all the legal systems of the classical Mediterranean world, and their contexts: eg it will point you to articles on papyrology,  numismatics, the history of religions, etc as well.

Finally, should you suddenly feel the need for a reminder about the law concerning inheritances of decurions, shipmasters et al. while in an internet cafe on holiday, there is a freely available Annotated Justinian Code, courtesy of the University of Wyoming! 

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