Research Topic
Law and Justice from Constantine to Justinian
Supervisors
Phil Booth, Neil McLynn
My research is concerned with how Roman law changed across the 4th-6th centuries. The central argument is that Christianity succeeded in redefining the classical definition of justice, especially through the prominent bishops of the late 4th and early 5th centuries, and that this had a legislative impact. The aim of the project is to outline the mutually reinforcing changes to the idea of justice and the law itself as found in the late Roman legal codes.
In the past year I have presented two test cases of this thesis. The first was given at the 23rd OUBS conference and documented how Christianity changed the nature and legal function of holidays. The second was a reassessment of the increasingly complex laws on 'prescription of forum', which I presented at Shifting Frontiers XIV, Ohio State University.
