Utilitas - The Word That Changes Everything?

Addressing the long-standing debate over its teleological versus pragmatic nature, the study analyzes utilitas’ pervasive presence across Roman legal sources and argues that it was not simply about practical advantage, but an ethical principle shaping how jurists read and interpreted the law. The discussion focuses on utilitatis causa decisions - reminiscent of those of an absolute ruler, standing in opposition to the wording of the law. These decisions appear to follow two recurring rhetorical patterns: contra scriptum (going against the law) and supra scriptum (adding to the law when it was silent). These patterns seem to have been used deliberately, not as ad hoc exceptions, but as a consistent framework for aligning legal norms with their underlying purpose. Overall, utilitas is positioned as a criterion structuring juristic interpretation rather than merely guiding practical outcomes. This approach reframes utilitas as the ethical bedrock of Roman law, offering insight into both the creativity and discipline of Roman juristic reasoning.

Bio

Joanna Kulawiak-Cyrankowska is Assistant Professor in the Department of Roman Law at the University of Łódź, Poland, where she teaches Roman Law and Latin - often in Latin. She holds a doctoral degree in Law and a Master’s degree in Classical Philology. Her research sits at the intersection of law and literature, exploring how these fields borrow each other’s tricks. She has recently published a monograph, Utilitas in Roman Jurists' Legal Interpretation, and currently investigates legal echoes in Roman satire as part of her Polish National Science Centre project, exploring how humour and rigour can share the same desk. She is also a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bamberg, Germany, working on the ERC-funded project Understanding Late Antique Top-Down Communication: A Study of Imperial Constitutions (AntCoCo).