BiblioVault - Books about Kehoe, Dennis P.

Ancient Law, Ancient Society

Dennis P. Kehoe and Thomas A. J. McGinn, editors

University of Michigan Press, 2017

The essays composing Ancient Law, Ancient Society examine the law in classical antiquity both as a product of the society in which it developed and as one of the most important forces shaping that society. Contributors to this volume consider the law via innovative methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives—in particular, those drawn from the new institutional economics and the intersection of law and economics.

Essays cover topics such as using collective sanctions to enforce legal norms; the Greek elite’s marriage strategies for amassing financial resources essential for a public career; defenses against murder charges under Athenian criminal law, particularly in cases where the victim put his own life in peril; the interplay between Roman law and provincial institutions in regulating water rights; the Severan-age Greek author Aelian’s notions of justice and their influence on late-classical Roman jurisprudence; Roman jurists’ approach to the contract of mandate in balancing the changing needs of society against respect for upper-class concepts of duty and reciprocity; whether the Roman legal authorities developed the law exclusively to serve the Roman elite’s interests or to meet the needs of the Roman Empire’s broader population as well; and an analysis of the Senatus Consultum Claudianum in the Code of Justinian demonstrating how the late Roman government adapted classical law to address marriage between free women and men classified as coloni bound to their land.

In addition to volume editors Dennis P. Kehoe and Thomas A. J. McGinn, contributors include Adriaan Lanni, Michael Leese, David Phillips, Cynthia Bannon, Lauren Caldwell, Charles Pazdernik, and Clifford Ando.

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Investment, Profit, and Tenancy

The Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy

Dennis P. Kehoe

University of Michigan Press, 1997

The economy of the Roman Empire was dominated by the business of agriculture. It employed the vast majority of the Empire's labor force and provided the wealth on which the upper classes depended for their social privileges. Consequently, the way in which upper-class Romans maintained and profited from their agricultural investments played a crucial role in shaping the basic relationships characterizing the Roman economy.
In Investment, Profit, and Tenancy Dennis P. Kehoe defines the economic mentality of upper-class Romans by analyzing the assumptions that Roman jurists in the Digest of Justinian made about investment and profit in agriculture as they addressed legal issues involving private property. In particular the author analyzes the duties of guardians in managing the property of their wards, and the bequeathing of agricultural property. He bases his analysis on Roman legal sources, which offer a comprehensive picture of the economic interests of upper-class Romans. Farm tenancy was crucial to these interests, and Kehoe carefully examines how Roman landowners contended with the legal, social, and economic institutions surrounding farm tenancy as they pursued security from their agricultural investments.
Kehoe argues that Roman jurists offer a consistent picture of agriculture as a form of investment that was grounded in upper-class conceptions of the Roman economy. In the eyes of the jurists, agriculture represented the only form of investment capable of providing upper-class Romans with economic security, and this situation had important implications for the relationship between landowners and tenants. Landowners who sought economic stability from their agricultural holdings preferred to simplify the task of managing their estates by delegating the work and costs to their tenants. This tended to make landowners depend on the expertise and resources of tenants, which in turn gave the tenants significant bargaining power. This dynamic relationship is traced in the jurists' regulation of farm tenancy, as the jurists adapted Roman law to the economic realities of the Roman empire.
Investment, Profit, and Tenancy will be of interest to classicists as well as to scholars of preindustrial comparative economics.
Dennis P. Kehoe is Professor of Classical Studies, Tulane University.

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Law and the Rural Economy in the Roman Empire

Dennis P. Kehoe

University of Michigan Press, 2010

The economy of the Roman Empire was predominantly agrarian: Roman landowners, agricultural laborers, and small tenant farmers were highly dependent upon one another for assuring stability. By examining the property rights established by the Roman government, in particular the laws concerning land tenure and the contractual relationships between wealthy landowners and the tenant farmers to whom they leased their land, Dennis P. Kehoe is able to demonstrate how the state fostered economic development and who benefited the most. In this bold application of economic theory, Kehoe explores the relationship between Roman private law and the development of the Roman economy during a crucial period of the Roman Empire, from the second to the fourth century C.E. Kehoe is able to use the laws concerning land tenure, and the Roman government's enforcement of those laws, as a window through which to develop a more comprehensive view of the Roman economy. With its innovative application of the methodologies of law and economics and the New Institutional Economics Law and the Rural Economy in the Roman Empire is a groundbreaking addition to the study of the Roman economy.

Dennis P. Kehoe is Professor of Classical Studies at Tulane University. He is the author of several books, including Investment, Profit, and Tenancy: The Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy(University of Michigan Press, 1997).

"Kehoe brings his deep expertise in Roman land tenure systems and his broad knowledge of the methodologies of New Institutional Economics to bear on questions of fundamental importance regarding the relationship of Roman law and society. Was governmental policy on agriculture designed to benefit large landowners or small farmers? What impact did it have on the rural economy? The fascinating answers Kehoe provides in this pathbreaking work should occasion a major reassessment of such problems by social and legal historians."
---Thomas McGinn, Department of Classical Studies at Vanderbilt University, and author of The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World: A Study of Social History and the Brothel and Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome

"A ground-breaking study using the principles of New Institutional Economics to analyze the impact of legal policy in balancing the interests of Roman tenant-farmers and landowners in the 2-4 centuries C.E. Kehoe's book will be essential reading for historians of the Roman Empire, demonstrating how the government overcame challenges and contradictions as it sought to regulate this enormous sector of the economy."
---Susan D. Martin, Department of Classics, University of Tennessee

"In Law and the Rural Economy, Kehoe brings to life the workings of the ancient economy and the Roman legal system. By analyzing interactions between the imperial government, landlords, and tenant farmers in provinces across the Empire, Kehoe opens insights into imperial economic policy. He handles a variety of challenging sources with mastery and wit, and his knowledge of scholarship is extensive and thorough, covering ancient history, textual problems in the sources, legal history and, perhaps most impressively, the modern fields of economic theory and 'law and economics.' Kehoe's innovative and sophisticated methodology sets his work apart. The book will make an important contribution to our understanding of access to the law and the effectiveness of the legal system, important topics for scholars of law, ancient and modern."
---Cynthia J. Bannon, Department of Classical Studies, Indiana University

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Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy

Dennis P. Kehoe, David M. Ratzan, and Uri Yiftach, editors

University of Michigan Press, 2015

Transaction costs (TC) are the “friction” in an economic system, and their analysis is vital to understanding institutional design and economic performance. Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy is the first volume to collect specific studies from a transaction cost perspective. The volume offers models of this new way of looking at ancient evidence, and suggests ways in which traditional subject areas might inform problems in contemporary economics and legal studies.

After the editors’ methodological introduction, the contributors investigate the roles and effects of transaction costs in fourth-century Athens, Ptolemaic Egypt, the Roman Empire, and late antiquity, on the basis of legal texts, papyri, and inscriptions. Collected here are some of the leading voices on TC analysis in ancient history, as well as established scholars, including several who do not usually publish in English: Alain Bresson, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Rudolf Haensch, Dennis Kehoe, François Lerouxel, J. G. Manning, Brian Muhs, Josiah Ober, David M. Ratzan, Gerhard Thür, and Uri Yiftach.

This volume will speak to those who identify with traditional subject areas, like epigraphy or Greek law, and will also demonstrate the value of experimenting with this new way of looking at ancient evidence.

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