The Discovery of the Fact (Law And Society In The Ancient World)

"The Discovery of the Fact draws on expertise from lawyers, historians of philosophy, and scholars of classical studies and ancient history, to take a very modern perspective on an underexplored but essential domain of ancient legal history. Everyone is familiar with courts as adjudicators of facts. But legal institutions also played an essential role in the emergence of the notion of the fact, and contributed in a vital way to commonplace understandings of what is knowable and what is not. These issues have a particular importance in ancient Greece and Rome, the first western societies in which state law and state institutions of dispute resolution visibly play a decisive role in ordinary social and economic relations. The Discovery of the Fact investigates, historically and comparatively, the relationships among the law, legal institutions, and the boundaries of knowledge in classical Greece and Rome. Societies wanted citizens to conform to the law, but how could this be insured? On what foundation did ancient courts and institutions base their decisions, and how did they represent the reasoning behind their decisions when announcing them? Slaves were owned like things, and yet they had minds that ancients conceded were essentially unknowable. What was to be done? And where has the boundary been drawn between questions of law and questions of fact when designing processes of dispute resolution?"-- Provided by publisher The Discovery of the Fact draws on expertise from lawyers, historians of philosophy, and scholars of classical studies and ancient history, to take a very modern perspective on an underexplored but essential domain of ancient legal history. Everyone is familiar with courts as adjudicators of facts. But legal institutions also played an essential role in the emergence of the notion of the fact, and contributed in a vital way to commonplace understandings of what is knowable and what is not. These issues have a particular importance in ancient Greece and Rome, the first western societies in which state law and state institutions of dispute resolution visibly play a decisive role in ordinary social and economic relations. The Discovery of the Fact investigates, historically and comparatively, the relationship between the law, legal institutions, and the boundaries of knowledge in classical Greece and Rome. Societies wanted citizens to conform to the law, but how could this be insured? On what foundation did ancient courts and institutions base their decisions, and how did they represent the reasoning behind their decisions when announcing them? Slaves were owned like things, and yet they had minds that ancients conceded were essentially unknowable. What was to be done? And where has the boundary been drawn between questions of law and questions of fact when designing processes of dispute resolution? Contents 6 Introduction: The Discovery of the Fact | Clifford Ando 8 Chapter 1: Were the Ancient Greeks Epistemic Democrats? | Daniela Cammack 16 Chapter 2: The Legal Construction of the Fact, between Rhetoric and Roman Law | Nicolas Cornu Thénard 46 Chapter 3: Legal Knowledge in Gortyn: Debt Bondage and the Liability of Slaves in Gortynian Law | David M. Lewis 79 Chapter 4: Free in Fact? Legal Status and State in the Suits for Freedom | Nicole Giannella 98 Chapter 5: Gossip, Slander, Hearsay, Truth: Oral Evidence in Athenian Courts | Esther Eidinow 119 Chapter 6: Truth and Athenian Court Verdicts | Adriaan Lanni 145 Chapter 7: The Certainty of Documents: Records of Proceedings as Guarantors of Memory in Political and Legal Argument | Clifford Ando 162 Chapter 8: Fact as Law: An Archaeology of Legal Realism | Pierre Thévenin 182 Contributors 210 Index 212 __The Discovery of the Fact____The Discovery of the Fact__