The underlying issue for the project ‘Law in Social Networks of Late Antique Aphrodito’ (2019/35/B/HS3/02301), financed by the Polish National Science Centre is how particular types of legal practices and legal devices were shaped by the communities that used them, and to what extent such communities were able to assume the prerogatives of the ‘lawmaker’ on a small scale. The question of whether legal devices created at the micro level could have influenced the general rules set by the state will also be addressed. Using sixth-century documentary papyri from the Egyptian village of Aphrodite, the project will attempt to answer a question that is fundamental to our understanding of the mechanisms governing lawmaking processes in late antiquity.
The project assumes that legal institutions are formed at least in two ways, which are not mutually exclusive. Some institutions are created in a top-down decision-making process, under which an authority decides to enact them based on policy considerations and then strives to implement them in the bureaucratic practice and life of the society. This model which treats law as an instrument of policy is well illustrated by various late antique examples.
Simultaneously, we can observe another model of law-making, especially relevant for premodern societies. Under this model, legal institutions are effects of bottom-up processes of institutionalisation. What appears first is a singular occurrence embedded within existing social structure (e.g. exchange, contract, act of violence or extortion). This can then develop into more widespread practice/routinised behaviour between social actors (multiple actions of a particular type), which could in turn transform into custom or even customary law. Finally, some customs are then codified into statutory law. The model was framed on classical approaches to law in legal anthropology and sociology of law which highlight its role as a regulator of social conflicts, as well as on critical legal studies that perceive law as a tool of social domination exercised by higher strata of the society.
Combining the above-mentioned law-making models with Social Network Analysis (SNA) will help us recognise multiple examples for explaining whether and how social network structures and specific types of existing relations between actors influenced the legal institutionalisation of the relations between them. How does it happen that certain practices develop into statutory law, while others do not? The study of legal relations in social networks within the society is likely to provide us with the answer to these fundamental questions.