Divisions of Law

Abstract Divisions of Law presents a comprehensive study and translation of Jean Bodin’s Iuris Universi Distributio, a work first published in 1578 exemplifying a new systematic genre of jurisprudence. The study opens with an intellectual history of Bodin’s jurisprudence, focusing on his humanist education in Toulouse and his eventual rejection of both the Bartolist and humanist schools in favor of a new systematic form of legal science, what is called Legal Ramism (after the logician Pierre Ramus). The book continues with a detailed study of the classical forms of analysis and rhetorical skill deployed in the Distributio to systematize and divide efficiently the massive content of classical Roman law, including persons, property, contracts, and legal procedure, into what Bodin viewed as an accessible and rational order. The book concludes with a study of Bodin’s theory of justice, which proposes a third Pythagorean alternative—“harmonic justice”—as an alternative to the commutative and distributive forms of justice associated with arithmetic and geometric ratios, respectively. The book includes the first English translation of the Distributio.