On the Weak Ethics and Its Meaning of Roman Family Law

Henry Maine tried to generalize the development of ancient law by his penetrating theory which is actually also a little general. The term “status” can not strictly define the relationship of rights and obligations among the family members under the Roman law. To the opposite, there is a partiality in the personal relationship of the family under the Roman law, while there is a tendency of individualism in the property relationship. In a family, the economic factors can influence personal relationship to a certain extent. So the Roman law has the characteristics of weak ethics. It is the Roman law with weak ethics that makes the European ancient law develop along the way of pure regularity in the early times. It also reflects that European ancient law developed on the threshold of attaching little importance to ethic of the social essential unit(the family), while the law obeys the orders of morale only at the level of the most essential need.