It is necessary to promote the convergence between history and legal dogmatics. The exacerbation of historicism, manifested in the mere philological study of texts while neglecting the political and socioeconomic context in which legal solutions arise, has led to evident advances in legal science but has distanced us from current legal reality and from scholars and the sciences of positive law.

In the field of legal dogmatics, 19th-century German Pandectism created a logical system of concepts with claims to universality, drawn from the Digest or Justinian’s Pandects, which laid the foundations of the science of European private law.

The historical perspective and the philosophical analysis of legal institutions and systems are fundamental tools for preserving the jurist’s freedom. The aseptic study of positive law —even that which is currently in force and developed according to political-democratic criteria of justice— without historical and philosophical evaluation, carries the risk of producing a sacralized or dogmatic perception of the law. This would result in a figure of an expert or technician in current regulations who would not differ much from the vilified image of the pedantic legalist.

Roman law is the legal system that has achieved the highest degree of perfection in human history, not only because of the justice of its contents but also due to the technique and enduring logic of its legal reasoning.

The Roman private law experience, the ius privatum, is ultimately considered the classical manifestation of legal science, transcending the period in which it developed to become the foundational pillar of continental European private law. The systematization, as well as most of the concepts, institutions, rules, and solutions regulated in the private law codes of the nations of continental Europe and Latin America, originates in Roman law.

Moreover, the influence of ius publicum on the history of Europe has been continuous over time, beginning with the very ideals of the European community, which Rome inherited from Greece and developed within the constitutional, administrative, and fiscal structures of the Republic and, later, the Principate and the Late Empire. Many of these institutions and legal norms have been transferred to contemporary legal systems.  

Finally, to refer to the process of integration and uninterrupted influence of Roman law in the history of European law up to the present day, scholars use the expression Romanist tradition.

Director
ANTONIO FERNÁNDEZ DE BUJÁN Y FERNÁNDEZ (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Académico de Número de la Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislación de España)

Assistant Directors

FEDERICO FERNÁNDEZ DE BUJÁN Y FERNÁNDEZ (UNED. Académico de Número de la Real Academia de Doctores)
JUAN MIGUEL ALBURQUERQUE SACRISTÁN (Universidad de Córdoba)

Technical Advisors
RAQUEL ESCUTIA ROMERO (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
DIEGO DÍEZ PALACIOS (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Academic Secretary
MARÍA LUISA LÓPEZ HUGUET (UNIR)
SALVADOR RUIZ PINO (Universidad Pontificia Comillas)

Scientific Advisory Board