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Roman Arbitration: An English Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Peter Stein
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Extract

In all societies disputing parties have similar reasons for choosing to arbitrate rather than to use the regular legal process as a means of resolving their differences. Arbitration may be conducted in private, so that the publicity inevitably attendant on the public hearing which is part of the regular legal process is avoided. Arbitration may be speedier, since the parties do not have to wait until the court is ready; arbitration will normally be less beset by formalities than the legal process and it may be cheaper. These considerations apply whatever the character of the regular legal process.

During the formative periods of Roman law and English law, however, disputing parties had a particular reason for preferring to arbitrate and that derives from the nature of a legal action in Rome and in England. Both in the classical Roman procedure and in the classical common law procedure the plaintiff was constrained to bring his claim within one of a number of specified forms of action. These forms of action were set out in the praetor's edict in Rome and the Register of Writs in England. They specified the circumstances in which a legal action could be brought, and directed the plaintiff to the appropriate formula or writ which was required to set the action on the way to a trial.

Type
Roman Law
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1-2 , Winter-Spring 1995 , pp. 215 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1995

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References

1 Stein, P., “Roman Law, Common Law and Civil Law”, (1992) 66 Tulane L. R. 1591ff.Google Scholar

2 De Beneficas, 3.7.5:… quaecumque in cognitionem cadunt comprendi possunt et non dare infinitam licentiam iudici; ideo melior videtur condicio causae bonae si ad iudicem quam si ad arbitrum mittitur, quia illum formula incluait et certos quos non excedat terminos ponit, huius libera et nullis adstricta vinculis religio et detrahere aliquid potest et adicere et sententiam suam, non prout lex aut iustitia suadet sed prout humanitas et misericordia impulit regere.

3 Symbolaeographia, Part II, 164.

4 Broggini, G., Iudex arbitene. Prolegomena zum officium des römischen Privatrichters (1957) 40.Google Scholar

5 Martino, P., Arbiter (Rome, 1986)Google Scholar; but this has been doubted by Edzard, D. O., “Arbiter, ein punisches Lehnwort?”, (1991) 108Google ScholarZeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 286.

6 For English developments, I have used a Cambridge M.Litt. dissertation by my pupil D. H.Yarn: The Changing Role of English Arbitration (1990).

7 The main treatises are Talamanca, M., Ricerche in tema di “compromissum”, (1958)Google Scholar; Ziegler, K.-H., Das private Schiedsgericht im antiken römischen Recht (1971)Google Scholar; reviewed by Talamanca, , (1974) 20 Labeo 83–104.Google Scholar

8 Lenel, O., Das Edictum perpetuum, (3rd ed., 1927Google Scholar; repr.1956), 130–1.

9 Stein, P., “‘Equitable’ Remedies for the Protection of Property”, in New Perspectives in the Roman Law of Property: Essays for Barry Nicholas, Birks, P., ed. (1989) 185ff.Google Scholar

10 Equity in Roman Law (1911) 28.

11 For Labeo's views, see Ziegler, supra n. 7, at 34–43.

12 Ziegler, supra n. 7, at 40–41.

13 On this text, Gallo, F., “La dottrina di Proculo e quella di Paolo in materia di arbitraggio”, in Studi G. Grosso III (1969) 479–542.Google Scholar

14 Cimma, M.R., L'Episcopales audientia nelle costituzioni imperiali da Costantino a Giustiniano (1989), 31ffGoogle Scholar; cf. review by De Giovanni, L., (1989) 40 IURA 92–5.Google Scholar

15 Judicious reviews of the literature by Cimma, ibid., at 84ff and Rabello, A., “The Legal Condition of the Jews in the Roman Empire”, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 11.13 (1980) 731ff.Google Scholar