The Genuine Article

[RonPrice]

...those men, heads of the most powerful state that existed....did not find any legitimate legal titles with which to designate their right to the exercise of power...they did not know the basis on which they ruled....at the end of the whole thousand-year process which is Rome

[Favonius Cornelius]

I don't even know where to begin with this one. No, I do. It begins with the sacred Twelve Tables.

[Primus Pilus]

Hence the Empire never had any genuine juridicial form, authentic legality, or legitimacy.

 

An interesting concept, but a state does not need to have consistent juridicial form in order to have legitimate law. While the institution of the courts went through many changes in both Republican and Imperial Rome law was still upheld with general consistency. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the various laws of any particular era or whether or not certain individuals or organizations circumvented and manipulated that law, one cannot deny that the law existed.

 

The Empire was essentially a shapeless form of government...without authentic institutions....

 

The offices of Consul, Praetor, Quaestor, Praefectus, Procurator, even Princeps etc. are not authentic?

 

but the famous Roman conservatism resided in the fact that a Roman knew what law is...it is that which cannot be reformed, which cannot be varied

 

There is truth in this statement regarding Roman conservatism and reverence for traditional law and custom, but yet, the law was reformed and it did vary so the statement is flawed. I'm rather confused by the whole bit.

 

Care to expound on what Jose Ortega y Gasset may have been trying to say?

[RonPrice]

Hence the Empire never had any genuine juridicial form, authentic legality, or legitimacy.

 

An interesting concept, but a state does not need to have consistent juridicial form in order to have legitimate law. While the institution of the courts went through many changes in both Republican and Imperial Rome law was still upheld with general consistency. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the various laws of any particular era or whether or not certain individuals or organizations circumvented and manipulated that law, one cannot deny that the law existed.

 

The Empire was essentially a shapeless form of government...without authentic institutions....

 

The offices of Consul, Praetor, Quaestor, Praefectus, Procurator, even Princeps etc. are not authentic?

 

but the famous Roman conservatism resided in the fact that a Roman knew what law is...it is that which cannot be reformed, which cannot be varied

 

There is truth in this statement regarding Roman conservatism and reverence for traditional law and custom, but yet, the law was reformed and it did vary so the statement is flawed. I'm rather confused by the whole bit.

 

Care to expound on what Jose Ortega y Gasset may have been trying to say?

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After more than two years, I feel I must first apologize for not getting back here sooner. Sadly, in the early evening of my life there is still much to do. I will offer the following comment, somewhat tangential to the theme of the legitimacy of the authority structures of the Empire. I hope readers here find my post useful to the discussion.-Ron Price, Australia

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I want to draw on Francis Fukuyama's article "The End of History?" in The National Interest, Summer 1989. Fukuyama writes that "the notion that ideology is a superstructure imposed on a substratum of permanent great power interest is a highly questionable proposition. For the way in which any state defines its national interest is not universal but rests on some kind of prior ideological basis. Economic behavior is often determined by a prior state of consciousness. In our modern age states have adopted highly articulated doctrines with explicit foreign policy agendas legitimizing expansionism, like Marxism-Leninism or National Socialism for example.

 

"The expansionist and competitive behavior of nineteenth century Europeans states rested on no less ideal a basis; it just so happened that the ideology driving it was less explicit than the doctrines of the twentieth century. For one thing, most "liberal" European societies were illiberal insofar as they believed in the legitimacy of imperialism, that is, the right of one nation to rule over other nations without regard for the wishes of the ruled. The justifications for imperialism varied from nation to nation, from a crude belief in the legitimacy of force, particularly when applied to non-Europeans, to the White Man's Burden and Europe's Christianizing mission, to the desire to give people of color access to the culture of Rabelais and Moliere. But whatever the particular ideological basis, every "developed" country believed in the acceptability of higher civilizations ruling lower ones -- including, incidentally, the United States with regard to the Philippines. This led to a drive for pure territorial aggrandizement in the latter half of the century and played no small role in causing the Great War.

 

Let me add a few more remarks that throw light by the power of analogical thought on the question of legitimacy in the Roman Empire. As monarchical, aristocratic and corporate powers democratized in our modern , the new states aspired to the ceremonial majesty and legitimacy claims of the previous monarchical order, but now it was democratic majesty that was proclaimed. Thus the great public buildings of Washington, D.C., with Congress apart from the White House, beautifully, simply and powerfully gave visible form to the notion of separation of powers. And elections are a dramatic ceremonial reminder of democratic legitimation. The emerging structures of transnational decision-making, however, do not have such features, and much of their activity is even hidden. The inner processes of the World Bank and IMF, to take two conspicuously significant examples, are hardly publicized and positions taken by many national representatives to those organizations are not even made publicly available. Rather than legitimacy, it is invisibility that is sought. How such power might be democratized is the challenge of the twenty-first century.

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Enouugh on this long and complex question.-Ron Price