Soazick Kerneis

Biography

-My research concerns with the inheritance of ‘Roman law’ in the Western provinces. To grasp the importance of Rome’s legacy and to understand its diversity, I try to emphasize the process of acculturation from the life of law. Popular sources like judicial prayers or wooden tablets show the intertwining between popular practices and Roman law, as well the impact of legal hybridization in the development of law. It is perhaps at that very moment and in this popular context that beyond the Roman ius blossomed up a late directum that framed the European laws (cf the French term for law: droit).
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Working on the hybridisation of norms in the late Roman Empire, I have paid attention to the development of alternative procedures able to accommodate imperial justice and justice of the invisible. This very first step grabbed my interest for the current practice of alternative dispute resolution from a historical and anthropological perspective. Paying a tribute to the research of Raymond Verdier on ordeal in Africa, I wrote different papers on the birth or ordeal in the late Roman Empire in the context or a Roman military justice applied to the Barbarian soldiers.

Last publications
S. Kerneis (éd.), Une histoire juridique de l’Occident. Le droit et la coutume (IIIe-IXe siècles), PUF, Paris, 2018.
La justice en vérité. Une histoire romaine du dire-vrai, collection Les sens du droit, Dalloz, 2022.
La forge du droit. Naissance des identités juridiques en Europe (IVe-XIIIe siècles) : actes du séminaire tenu à All Souls College en 2013, (codirection avec B. Sirks), Clio@Themis numéro 10, 2016 https://doi.org/10.35562/cliothemis.84.

« Viol antique. Une affaire d’honneur », Cahiers de la Justice 1, 2025, (17 p)
« Le malum carmen et l’invention du droit à Rome », in Sorcellerie et Tribunaux (dir. S. Soleil & S. Nene Bi Boti), Cahiers du CAHDIP, 2024, p. 85-94 https://www.cahdiip.com/#publications
« Late Roman Military Justice and the Birth of Ordeal”, .in The Civilian Legacy of the Roman Army, (ed. L. Loschavo), Brill, 2024, p. 446-457.
« Qu’il marche au chaudron. La pérennité de pratiques militaires dans le droit franc », in I Franchi, Spolète, CISAM, 2022 (Atti delle Settimane di Studio, 69).

Research Interests
Roman Law ; Legal history ; ancient history ; life of law