Control Of The Laws In The Ancient Democracy At Athens
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Author | : Edwin Carawan |
Publisher | : JHU Press |
Total Pages | : 323 |
Release | : 2020-12-15 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 1421439506 |
The definitive book on judicial review in Athens from the 5th through the 4th centuries BCE. The power of the court to overturn a law or decree—called judicial review—is a critical feature of modern democracies. Contemporary American judges, for example, determine what is consistent with the Constitution, though this practice is often criticized for giving unelected officials the power to strike down laws enacted by the people's representatives. This principle was actually developed more than two thousand years ago in the ancient democracy at Athens. In Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens, Edwin Carawan reassesses the accumulated evidence to construct a new model of how Athenians made law in the time of Plato and Aristotle, while examining how the courts controlled that process. Athenian juries, Carawan explains, were manned by many hundreds of ordinary citizens rather than a judicial elite. Nonetheless, in the 1890s, American apologists found vindication for judicial review in the ancient precedent. They believed that Athenian judges decided the fate of laws and decrees legalistically, focusing on fundamental text, because the speeches that survive from antiquity often involve close scrutiny of statutes attributed to lawgivers such as Solon, much as a modern appellate judge might resort to the wording of the Framers. Carawan argues that inscriptions, speeches, and fragments of lost histories make clear that text-based constitutionalism was not so compelling as the ethos of the community. Carawan explores how the judicial review process changed over time. From the restoration of democracy down to its last decades, the Athenians made significant reforms in their method of legislation, first to expedite a cumbersome process, then to revive the more rigorous safeguards. Jury selection adapted accordingly: the procedure was recast to better represent the polis, and packing the court was thwarted by a complicated lottery. But even as the system evolved, the debate remained much the same: laws and decrees were measured by a standard crafted in the image of the people. Offering a comprehensive account of the ancient origins of an important political institution through philological methods, rhetorical analysis of ancient arguments, and comparisons between models of judicial review in ancient Greece and the modern United States, Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens is an innovative study of ancient Greek law and democracy.
Author | : Edward M. Harris |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 488 |
Release | : 2013-09 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0199899169 |
The Law in Action in Democratic Athens is the first extensive study of the importance of the rule of law in Athenian democracy.
Author | : Edward M. Harris |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 21 |
Release | : 2006-04-17 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 113945689X |
This volume brings together essays on Athenian law by Edward M. Harris, who challenges much of the recent scholarship on this topic. Presenting a balanced analysis of the legal system in ancient Athens, Harris stresses the importance of substantive issues and their contribution to our understanding of different types of legal procedures. He combines careful philological analysis with close attention to the political and social contexts of individual statutes. Collectively, the essays in this volume demonstrate the relationship between law and politics, the nature of the economy, the position of women, and the role of the legal system in Athenian society. They also show that the Athenians were more sophisticated in their approach to legal issues than has been assumed in the modern scholarship on this topic.
Author | : Raphael Sealey |
Publisher | : Penn State Press |
Total Pages | : 168 |
Release | : 1990-10-01 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0271072903 |
This book traces continuity in the development of the Athenian constitution, whereas previous studies have usually looked for catastrophic changes. Sealey selects three features of Athenian law which are important for the structure of society and the location of authority: (1) the legal status, and to a lesser extent the socioeconomic condition, of the different kinds of inhabitants of Attica; (2) the distinction, recognized in the fourth century, between "laws" and "decrees," analyzing what the Athians understood by "law"; and (3) the development of the Athenian courts. At an early stage the Athenians conceived the ideal of the rule of law and adhered to it continuously. They did so by means of a static concept of law and maintenance of an independent judiciary. The book is designed to be of importance not only for specialists in classical studies but for general historians, political scientists, and those concerned with the history of law. The book is within the reach of an advanced undergraduate and graduate audience.
Author | : Steven Johnstone |
Publisher | : University of Texas Press |
Total Pages | : 224 |
Release | : 2010-07-05 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 029278855X |
Athenians performed democracy daily in their law courts. Without lawyers or judges, private citizens, acting as accusers and defendants, argued their own cases directly to juries composed typically of 201 to 501 jurors, who voted on a verdict without deliberation. This legal system strengthened and perpetuated democracy as Athenians understood it, for it emphasized the ideological equality of all (male) citizens and the hierarchy that placed them above women, children, and slaves. This study uses Athenian court speeches to trace the consequences for both disputants and society of individuals' decisions to turn their quarrels into legal cases. Steven Johnstone describes the rhetorical strategies that prosecutors and defendants used to persuade juries and shows how these strategies reveal both the problems and the possibilities of language in the Athenian courts. He argues that Athenian "law" had no objective existence outside the courts and was, therefore, itself inherently rhetorical. This daring new interpretation advances an understanding of Athenian democracy that is not narrowly political, but rather links power to the practices of a particular institution.
Author | : David Cohen |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 230 |
Release | : 1995-10-05 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780521388375 |
Using comparative anthropological and historical perspectives, this analysis of the legal regulation of violence in Athenian society challenges traditional accounts of the development of the legal process. It examines theories of social conflict and the rule of law as well as actual litigation.
Author | : Federica Carugati |
Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 256 |
Release | : 2019-08-20 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0691195633 |
A comprehensive account of how the Athenian constitution was created and how political and economic goals that were normally associated with Western developed countries were once achieved through different institutional arrangements--with lessons for contemporary constitution-building.ding.
Author | : Kurt A. Raaflaub |
Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | : 257 |
Release | : 2007 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0520258096 |
"A balanced, high-quality analysis of the developing nature of Athenian political society and its relationship to 'democracy' as a timeless concept."—Mark Munn, author of The School of History
Author | : Michael Gagarin |
Publisher | : University of Texas Press |
Total Pages | : 209 |
Release | : 2020-03-17 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 1477320393 |
The democratic legal system created by the Athenians was completely controlled by ordinary citizens, with no judges, lawyers, or jurists involved. It placed great importance on the litigants’ rhetorical performances. Did this make it nothing more than a rhetorical contest judged by largely uneducated citizens that had nothing to do with law, a criticism that some, including Plato, have made? Michael Gagarin argues to the contrary, contending that the Athenians both controlled litigants’ performances and incorporated many other unusual features into their legal system, including rules for interrogating slaves and swearing an oath. The Athenians, Gagarin shows, adhered to the law as they understood it, which was a set of principles more flexible than our current understanding allows. The Athenians also insisted that their legal system serve the ends of justice and benefit the city and its people. In this way, the law ultimately satisfied most Athenians and probably produced just results as often as modern legal systems do. Comprehensive and wide-ranging, Democratic Law in Classical Athens offers a new perspective for viewing a legal system that was democratic in a way only the Athenians could achieve.
Author | : |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 486 |
Release | : 2006 |
Genre | : Constitutional history |
ISBN | : 9780511220623 |
This brings together essays on Athenian law by Edward Harris, who challenges much of the recent scholarship on this topic. Presenting a balanced analysis of the legal system in ancient Athens, Harris stresses the importance of substantive issues and their contribution to our understanding of different types of legal procedures.