''Justitium'' (derived from the Latin term ''Juris statio'') is a

concept Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by sev ...

of Roman law, equivalent to the declaration of the

state of emergency A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to be able to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state du ...

. Some scholars also refer to it as a state of exception, stemming from a state of necessity. It involved the suspension of civil business, typically including the courts, the treasury and the Senate and was ordered by the Roman higher magistrates. It was usually declared following a sovereign's death, during the troubled period of '' interregnum'', but also in case of invasions. However, in this last case, it was not as much the physical danger of invasion that justified the instauration of a state of exception, as the consequences that the news of the invasion had in Rome; for example, ''justitium'' was proclaimed at the news of Hannibal's attacks. The earliest recorded occasion of ''justitium'' being invoked was for the same reason, when in 465 BC panic gripped the city due to a mistaken belief of imminent invasion by the

Aequi 300px, Location of the Aequi (Equi) in central Italy, 5th century BC. The Aequi ( grc, Αἴκουοι and Αἴκοι) were an Italic tribe on a stretch of the Apennine Mountains to the east of Latium in central Italy who appear in the early hi ...

. According to

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( , ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitics ...

, ''justitium'' progressively came to mean, after the Roman Republic, the public mourning of the sovereign: a sort of privatization or diversion of the danger threatening the '' polis'', as the sovereign claimed for himself the '' auctoritas'', or authority, necessary to the rule of law. In his conceptualization, it is a period where the law is indefinitely suspended without being abrogated for the purpose of generating an "anomic space in which what is at stake is a force of law without law".

References

* Giorgio Agamben, ''State of Exception'', 2005. * A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), William Smith * Livy, ''

Ab urbe condita ''Ab urbe condita'' ( 'from the founding of the City'), or ''anno urbis conditae'' (; 'in the year since the city's founding'), abbreviated as AUC or AVC, expresses a date in years since 753 BC, the traditional founding of Rome. It is an ex ...

'', 3.3

External links

''The Roman Law Library'' by Professor Yves Lassard and Alexandr Koptev
Emergency laws Latin legal terminology Philosophy of law Political philosophy Roman law {{AncientRome-law-stub

See also

References

External links