This chapter addresses the profound indebtedness of the Spanish Inquisition to its medieval predecessor. Both were grounded in the procedures and priorities of ancient Roman law. The text explains the concept of “heresy” within Christianity, as well as the ways in which medieval European rulers -- popes and monarchs -- worked together in an attempt to stamp out public, persistent, and intentional religious dissent. The essay charts the structural formation of the Spanish Inquisition after 1478, and examines the processes that were eventually standardized. It addresses questions of proof and legal discretion, as well as potential defense maneuvers by suspects. It raises the frequency of torture and describes more and less typical punishments, which Spanish inquisitors called “penances” in accordance with their overarching pastoral goals. Finally, this essay addresses the pivotal question of support for the Inquisition from below, namely, from ordinary Spaniards.

Why does sovereignty need narrative? In modern political thought, sovereignty typically appears as an abstract concept unrelated to storytelling. It usually is defined as a state’s supreme authority over internal affairs and borders, the noninterference of other states in its domestic matters, and the mutual recognition of states as sovereign entities. This model of state sovereignty is used to explain our current world order, which itself is a product of European empire building and colonization, even though it does not accurately describe today’s international situation or political practices. Indeed, it may never have done so.

The first chapter explores the background to the 1600 Charter setting out the conditions for the establishment of the East India Company. Here I am interested in the rights of acquisition inherited from the exploratory age of the Tudor state rather than the more familiar story of its formal constitution. The language of charters granted to trading companies revealed something of the discursive complexity shaped by European powers striving to legitimize claims to overseas territory. England had few jurists of note and so the state drew partially and selectively on Roman and common law to foreground the precept of possession, not least because it conveniently rendered obsolete all challenges to the means of acquisition. The chartered companies of unprecedented size, capital and ambition which rose to power in the second half of the sixteenth century inherited this repertoire of legal pluralism but found in practice that the quest for conquest of overseas territory was compromised by geography and the existence of rival European powers with similar ambitions.

The concept of a ‘formula’ (Formel) plays an important, if complicated, role in Kant’s ethics, especially in the Groundwork. The concept of a formula also plays an important role in Stoic accounts of moral reasoning in the Latin sources, Cicero and Seneca. This chapter explores the place and function of this concept in Stoic ethics and its origins in Roman legal theory and practice. It then raises the question of the relationship between the Kantian and Stoic uses of the concept, asking whether this is a case of direct influence of Stoicism on Kant’s moral philosophy. The chapter comes to no definite conclusion on the question, but aims to provide comparative materials that may help others to address the question.

My introduction considers the rhetorical mechanics of Roman legal writing, and isolates three distinct discursive modes in which legal writing represents the world: the normative, the descriptive, and the constructive. I then discuss the ideological valence of law in the Roman imagination, with reference to Cicero’s description of the ideal magistrate as a “talking law.” I finally provide a plan of the work.

This chapter examines the role of property rights as foundational institutional genes influencing social, economic, and political systems. It argues that the distribution of property rights, whether dispersed as those in ancient Greece and Rome or centralized as those in Imperial China, deeply affects the evolution of institutions such as the rule of law, constitutionalism, and democracy. Broadly held private property rights foster the development of these institutions, which become self-replicating over time. In contrast, centralized property rights lead to monopoly power and coercive institutions that not only frequently restrict individual freedoms but can also lay the foundation for totalitarianism. The chapter seeks to clarify the concept of property rights to offer deeper insights into these institutional dynamics.

Following his studies in philosophy and literature, MacCormick won a Snell Exhibition to study in Balliol College, Oxford (1963–65). He studied law, and this chapter explores both his studies – including the teachers who influenced him, such as Donald Harris and Alan Watson – as well as the influence of Richard Hare, whose work on moral reasoning was important for MacCormick. Alongside this, MacCormick participated in student politics at the time: he became President of the Oxford Union and, as he did in Glasgow, participated in the Union’s debates. Following his studies, in the summer of 1965, thanks to a Balliol Pathfinder Scholarship, MacCormick toured the USA, and recorded his observations, especially with relation to race and civil rights issues. This chapter thus discusses both the legal and the political formation MacCormick received in and thanks to Oxford and considers what impact this had on his character.

The relations between medieval and early modern Jews and the popes rested on consistently applied canonical and Roman law principles, alongside Pauline theology, which was itself bifurcated. These principles were fundamentally restrictive, and the restrictions became tighter over time. To speak of a mild early Middle Ages, driven by Augustinian principles, which turned radically hostile after the First Crusade, is a distortion. Nobody mentioned Augustine until Innocent III. There were forced conversions even in the early Middle Ages. Similarly, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was not a turning point, but a culmination. Subsequent attacks on literature were new, but not papally initiated. Beginning with Benedict XIII in 1415, a move to press conversion – without ignoring old limits, theoretically – began to grow, which culminated in Paul IV’s foundation of the Roman ghetto in 1555, intended be a cauldron of conversion achieved through repression. The policy failed.

This chapter addresses developments in Late Antiquity, which witnessed a partial shift to more land-based conceptions of both ownership and rulership. The prior literature has pointed to two explanatory factors: the decline of classical polis culture amidst the deurbanization of Late Antiquity, and the rise of Christianity. The chapter draws together the threads of this literature, in order to develop an account of late antique cultural change. Classical Roman property law, it argues, had its context in classical cities. The relative decay of urban dominance and the rise of Christianity tended to undermine the classical foundations of the law of both ownership and rulership. The Empire was reconceived in more territorial terms, while classical conceptions of elite power faltered. The resulting shifts did not result in any decisive and thoroughgoing transformation of the understanding of ownership and rulership, but they set the stage for later developments of great significance.

This chapter discusses archaic Roman property law, whose symbolism and terminology show a striking orientation toward the ownership of living creatures, human and animal. That symbolism and terminology was seized upon by many of the leading thinkers of the past, who believed it offered clues to the origins of human society. It was also seized upon by both Communist and Fascist ideologues. Today, by contrast, its significance is generally dismissed. Modern scholarship has been heavily dedicated to reconstructing the socio-economic realities; scholars often deploy their learning to dispel the “myths” in the sources, among them the myths in the archaic Roman sources. Yet the myths matter; “idioms of power” cannot simply be written off. The chapter brings the anthropology of property law to bear on the interpretation of these mysterious sources, and describes the long intellectual and political history of their interpretation and ideological use.