From legal humanism to legal transhumanism?

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Sometimes, understanding the law is no less different than understanding literature. We have to catch the "spirit" of the author. That is the reason why some scholars categorize comprehension of legal texts in the same row with literary criticism.

Recently, I have discovered an interesting article about the history of legal humanism. As we know, the Roman's corpus iuris civilis has become the backbone of private law in every country using the Civil Law. It was napoleon who re-codified the Corpus Iuris Civilis and spread it throughout Europe. Some Asian countries who were colonialised by European states had also incorporated the Corpus as it law of the land. The article portrays the fate of the Corpus during the Renaissance era.

"Roman law in the Renaissance," however, has an entirely different connotation for the legal historian as "the renaissance of Roman law." The latter can refer only to the rediscovery and study of the sources of Roman law in the 11th–12th centuries. Legal history thus never stood in any need of the "Revolt of the Medievalists" to disassociate the Middle Ages from a period of cultural darkness. In particular, there was never any temptation to discover a "Medieval humanism," to demonstrate that much Latin literature was known and used in the Middle Ages. This was too obvious to require demonstration; the single most significant event in European legal history has from earliest times always been seen as the recovery of the Latin Corpus luris in the 11th century. To be sure, the 16th century did discover some new sources of Roman law; but the master source, the Corpus luris, had been in active use from the 11th century onwards. So from the beginning legal humanism meant a reorientation in the use of existing ancient sources, not the discovery of classical antiquity.

In my opinion, a philosophical movement really should reflects its ideas in the form of law. The author of the above article seemed to of the opinion that the past legal humanism was empty.

However, in some countries, some text in the roman law that reflects inequalities, such as slavery and the deprivation of woman has been deleted (of course, because slavery is in contradiction with international law). A cite from Corpus Iuris Civilis:

1. Corporeal things are those which are by their nature tangible, as land, a slave, a garment, gold, silver, and other things innumerable. (Chapter II, book II)

17. The things we take from our enemies become immediately ours by the law of nations, so that even freemen thus become our slaves; but if they afterwards escape from us, and return to their own people, they regain their former condition. (Chapter I, book I)

The roman law was "sophisticated" in terms of its "abstraction". It, for example, divides corporeal and incorporeal things. However, the content (the moralities) of the roman law was awful, in compared to the older Greek Law.

Transhumanism provides an interesting intellectual challenge towards new abstractions and new moralities. I am personally interested in digging further new abstraction that transhumanism could bring toward present law. There is an area in Personal Law that attracts me: determination of parenthood through authorship method.

We will discuss further on this.