Abstract
This course explores spatial metaphors in the language of Roman jurists. The analysis will show that the reification of legal concepts is achieved not only through explicitly corporeal terms such as manus or capitis deminutio, but also through a more discrete network of metaphors embedded in legal reasoning. Through verbs of movement, images of proximity, distance or attraction, law appears as a world populated by quasi-material objects, subject to physical dynamics.
From this perspective, it is particularly interesting to examine the role played by the geological phenomenon of alluvium, the slow deposition of fragments of earth that water transports and gradually adds to another piece of land. Roman jurists were interested in this phenomenon because it shifted and blurred borders, calling into question one of the fundamental principles of law : the division of the world by clear lines.
But alluvium is not just a concrete legal problem. It has also become a veritable conceptual metaphor. Jurists draw on it to think about certain legal phenomena, such as the addition of one right to another, its extension, or on the contrary its detachment, which then seem to move, attach, separate or circulate like bodies in space.
Once again, metaphors - in particular those involving verbs - appear as a discreet but essential structure in the thinking of jurists.
