Mores in classical Roman law. A functional reflection Vol. 1: Methodological, linguistic and conceptual-historical foundations; mores with binding force Vol. 2: Contra bonos mores as a legal term in need of concretisation

• Applicant: Dr. Matthias Ehmer
• Subject Area: Principles of Law and Jurisprudence
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 561514093

Roman mores are an omnipresent, often ideologically charged topos in ancient sources. Latin studies and ancient history can therefore not analyse mores per se, but only individual aspects of the word based on specific factual questions. Up to now, the Romanist legal science has also applied this methodology to its object of investigation, although the manageable corpus of sources, the homogeneous group of authors and their ideology-free aims allow a word-based rather than factbased approach. On this base, the study pursues three immediate objectives: First, it aims to develop guidelines for a general methodology of word monographs based on hermeneutics in the humanities and its subject-specific concretisation. Second, the reader is to be placed in the context of the tradition and enabled to view mores from the perspective of Roman jurists. Therefore, the word needs to be categorised in terms of both intellectual and social history. Third, the project aims to offer the first complete, unprejudiced analysis of mores in the legal sources of the classical period. The claim to completeness has no documentary character; a dissertation should be neither a handbook nor a thesaurus. It enables - in contrast to the frequent blanket references in Romanist legal literature - a concretisation of the functional areas of mores, allows for conclusions about the methodology of Roman jurists and makes it possible to trace the development of the immorality verdict (contra bonos mores). The interdisciplinary approach and the strictly exegetical working method, with consistent application of the methodology developed by the author himself, leads to results that contradict the prevailing understanding of sources and law, some of which have been established for centuries. The study questions supposed certainties and invites further research. Three long-term goals are associated with its connectivity to further research: First, the interest of Romanist legal science in methodology - both its own and Roman - is unbroken. My considerations on word monographs may contribute to exploiting the cognitive possibilities of this form of work. By analysing the methodology of Roman jurists, the project counters the trend of deriving a methodological particularism from the historical individuality of jurists. Second, the categorisation of literary sources accompanying legal texts is intended to promote interdisciplinary discourse with Latin studies and ancient history. Third, the chapter on the verdict of immorality is aimed at modern civil law scholars. The last monographic studies on the offence against morality under section 138 (1) BGB date back to the 1960s. The methodology of Roman jurists, which differs from our codified legal system, invites us to critically scrutinise the traditional classification of cases.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants