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    Published: 2025-03-28
    Vol. 25 No. 1 (2025)

    The ‘societas leonina’ in the views of selected representatives of the Early ‘Usus Modernus Pandectarum’

    Tomasz Palmirski
    Zeszyty Prawnicze
    Section: Artykuły
    https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2025.25.1.01

    Abstract

    Usus Modernus Pandectarum was a new trend in the study of Roman law which emerged in 17th-century Germany. It was characterised by a new approach to the Pandects, that is the Digests of Justinian, which were regarded as tantamount to the whole of Roman law. Te name Usus Modernus Pandectarum alludes to Specimen usus moderni Pandectarum, the title of a famous textbook by Samuel Stryk, (Strykius, 1640-1710). Reiner Bachoff von Echt, Adam Struve, Peter Müller, Wolfgang Adam Lauterbach, Johann Friedrich Böckelmann and David Mevius, who flourished before the publication of Stryk’s textbook, were some of the best-known early representatives of this trend, and I shall call this period the Early Usus Modernus Pandectarum. This article provides an overview of their statements on the societas leonina (lion partnership), showing that, by analogy to Roman law, they considered such contracts invalid. A major change in this well-established perception of the societas leonina came with a statement by David Mevius, who observed that the inordinate inequality reserved for the partners to an informal pactum (contract) of this type made it invalid but did not invalidate the entire partnership contract, and would happen, for example, if an agreement had been made that one partner should receive all of the profit while the other sustained all the losses without sharing in the profit.

    Keywords:

    Roman law, societas leonina, societas nummo uno, Usus Modernus Pandectarum

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    Citation rules

    Palmirski, T. (2025). The ‘societas leonina’ in the views of selected representatives of the Early ‘Usus Modernus Pandectarum’. Zeszyty Prawnicze, 25(1), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2025.25.1.01

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