Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2026
ISSN
2572-7044
Publisher
Texas A&M University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
This article examines the role of Romanist-bourgeois property law in the development of the modern capitalist world system, focusing on how nineteenth-century jurists deliberately crafted and adapted Roman law-based property doctrines to address the evolving social relations of production in both Europe and its peripheries. Rather than viewing legal concepts as merely reflective of broader economic transformations, the author highlights the active role played by a professional class of jurists in shaping property law to legitimize and structure emergent capitalist class dynamics. The article critically engages with competing scholarly perspectives that either privilege market expansion or downplay class relations, arguing instead that the transformation of property law was deeply entwined with localized class struggles and the qualitative shift in relations between owners of capital and direct producers. By tracing the evolution of property forms such as dominium and the rise of doctrines emphasizing the social function of property, the study demonstrates how legal reforms both responded to and facilitated changes in the distribution of resources, state power, and individual agency. Case studies, including Chilean agrarian reforms and U.S. takings law, illustrate the enduring and contested legacy of Romanist property concepts in mediating the tension between individual rights and collective social interests in capitalist societies.
Recommended Citation
anna di robilant,
Romanist-Bourgeois Property and the Development of the Modern Capitalist World System
,
12
Texas A&M Journal of Property Law
377
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4295
