Miscarriages of Justice

Abstract

Throughout Tacitus’ works, the author frequently includes passages related to the law, the importance of which has increasingly been acknowledged in recent years. In particular, Tacitus devotes significant attention to the many different ways in which the enforcement and application of the law could malfunction. The collection and categorisation of these different types of breakdowns of the Roman legal order, it will be argued, can shed an important light on Tacitus’ legal thinking and the way in which he relates to wider judicial debates of his time. It will be suggested that Tacitus imbues his texts with a distinct, but ultimately nuanced, sense of legal scepticism and that he, rather than providing his readers with clear-cut answers, challenges them to carefully consider how the law ought to function and how they themselves should relate to it.