Dogmatics of Criminal Law and the Roman Jurisprudence

In contrast with Roman private law, criminal legal regulations – instead of cases – are normative rules principally that have demanded jurisprudential interpretation much less. Still, in the sources of ancient Roman law we can already find several basic concepts that show surprising similarities with the modern criminal doctrine. Although we can see an absence of abstract definitions serving for the notation of legal cases, the intention to demonstrate the criminal legal mentality of antique jurists – by using these fragments as casuistic illustrations in our study – cannot be regarded as it is for its own sake. What is more, by the abstraction of their observations and the comparison with basic concepts of modern dogmatics of criminal law we can get to such general theoretical conclusions that can help to reveal the “general part” of Roman criminal law expansively and systematically.