西方文明起源时期的法律人——以韦伯的法律社会学为分析框架

在西方文明起源的最初阶段,各个民族法律的制定和实施由祭司把持。希腊在进入城邦时代以后,在当时的法律人——作为“立法家”的政治家——的推动下,法律迅速摆脱了宗教的控制,转移到了民众手中,变成了富有弹性的制度。希腊未能发展出形式理性的法律制度,而罗马则在不同时期不同“法律人”的直接推动下,法律最终达到了形式理性化。罗马最初的法学家是祭司,他们将祭司法中的形式主义色彩带到了世俗法中;后来,裁判官在共和国政制下发挥着造法功能,丰富了法律内容;最后,罗马法的抽象性和系统性完全得益于职业法学家们的学术研究工作。由此可见,西方法律在文明起源阶段就已经经历了韦伯所概括的法律发展的四个阶段,其发展过程是曲折的,融合了多个民族的智慧,综合了多种不同法律人的连续努力,而职业法学家团体在其中具有决定性意义。

At the embryonic stage of Western civilization, the law of each nation was made and enforced by pontifices. After the emergence of city states, the law of the Ancient Greece, pushed by legislators, quickly shook off the control by religion and developed into an elastic system. The Ancient Greece failed to develop a legal system based on formal rationality, whereas the Ancient Rome succeeded through direct promo- tion by legal practitioners in different periods. Even at the embryonic stage of Western civilization, the western law had already gone through all the four stages as elaborated in Max Weber＇ s theory. It incorporated the intelligence of many nations and represented the persistent efforts of various legal practitioners.