Professor Mantovani’s teaching presents Roman law as a technique of thought, a tool for governing social relations, and also as an expression of Roman society, whose cultural imprint is preserved in the law. His method is to invite the public to read the texts in order to rediscover the world of ancient Rome. His teaching covers several thematic areas: the literary dimension inherent in the works of Roman jurists; the persistence of classical Roman law as a “hidden structure” underpinning judicial practice and legal education in Late Antiquity; the historiography of legal culture—that is, ancient and modern ideas about the history of law; and, finally, the conceptual lexicon of law, its values, and its techniques. Given the influence that Roman law exerted in Europe beginning in the 11th century, understanding this rich interpretive heritage means reclaiming a fundamental element of the European legal tradition and applying, for our own time as well, a technique for the reasoned resolution of conflicts.
