I. A. Gvozdeva Land law in the judicial composition of emperor Augustus’ cadastral survey

Abstract: The aim of this research is to study the developmental particularities of the Roman Land law, which defined the social life of Roman society from the Kingdom until the beginning of the Empire. More precisely, the article aims to expose the mechanism of the judicial process, which reflected the development of this branch of the Ius Civile. The basis for this research is the key source on land surveying and judicial procedures in land exploitation of Rome – the body of treatises written by Roman land surveyors (Corpus agrimensorum romanorum). However, this exceptional monument has not been sufficiently used by Russian and foreign scholars of Ancient Rome. The study of the judicial proceedings on land law is usually based on the works of classical jurists, which rather reflect the later stages of its development. Meanwhile in the Corpus agrimensorum, specialists of the Roman land law point to the long preservation of archaic forms of conducting legal processes, which August also included in the cadastral system. This raises a question: why in an optimal land survey system that precisely identified the position of ownership and possession were continued to be included methods of the previous ancient judicial process? A particularity of the Roman economy was the early registration of land ownership, established in the Ius Quiritium. These possessori existed during the whole period of the Republic, despite attempts of reorganization and the conservation of the judicial process. This is why the controversia de fine – the debate on natural boundaries – remained crucially important in land law and for a long time preserved clauses for pleadings. These clauses were also preserved by other delimitation legal claims: de rigore, de positione terminorum and what is more important, the controversia of the “on territory” – de loco, because they are all devoted to ownership relations. Ius Honorarium significantly contributed to the separation of ownership trials from delimitation suits. But even in the controversia of de modo, de possessione beside clearly defined propriety interest, were also preserved delimitation clauses. Without their full analysis it would have been impossible to come to a just verdict. This is why in the period of the praetorian law the judicial process established the adiudicatio (adjudgement), which led to a conflict resolution compromise that ensured social order. August also created a special law Ius Subsecivorum (law of segments), devoted to the judicial destiny of segments left from land surveyed fields. It was precisely on these segments of land that propriety disputes arose in cadasters, which were reflected in the controversia of delimitational character with attributes of the archaic judicial processes. This is why the preservation of ancient forms of judicial proceedings allowed full use of the possibilities of different land categories in a familiar for the Roman legal consciousness formulation. And this is precisely what defined the formation of the land law into a separate branch of the Ius Civile.

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