Julian's Essay and Causation as a Premise for Liability for Damages: Na marginesie książki Wolfganga Ernsta Justinian's Digest 9.2.51 in the Western Legal Canon: Roman Legal Thought and Modern Causality Concepts (Intersentia: Cambridge-Antwerp-Chicago 2019)

Abstract

In the book under review, Wolfgang Ernst, on the basis of a detailed analysis of the controversial opinion of the jurist Salvius Julian (D. 9,2,51), puts forward two bold theses concerning the prerequisites for delictual liability on the basis of the first chapter of the lex Aquilia. Wolfgang Ernst argues, firstly, that not only Julian, but Roman jurists in general when assigning liability were not concerned with establishing causation, but were interpreting the text of the first chapter of the Aquilian law, especially the key word "kill" (occidere). Secondly, he shows that in the case analysed in Julian's essay where 'someone inflicted a mortal wound on a slave, and after some time someone else so struck the same slave that he suffered death sooner than if he had died from the first wound' Julian follows the art of interpretation and correctly recognises that 'each of them killed the slave, under different circumstances and at different times (ex diversa causa et diversis temporibus)'. However, the author shies away from deriving conclusions for contemporary legal constructions. In my view, Julian can still tell us a lot today, at least that the attribution of liability for damages is also today more a matter of interpretation of the law than of establishing causal link. The way Ernst has worked out the issue of the interpretation of the Julian passage leads to the conclusion that we are witnessing a novelty in the methodology of Roman law, also in terms of the way the content is presented: the author presents in the most elaborate second chapter (Evidence) almost every attempt to interpret the Julian passage proposed from the time of the glossators to the present day. By means of a very systematic work on the previous reflections of Romanists, Wolfgang Ernst has established, admittedly on the basis of a very narrow example, how the number of people working on Roman law has increased, how the "geography" of the study of Roman law has developed. Today more people study Roman law than ever before in history.