Research Project

The Dialectic of Privilege. A Manifold Exception becomes a Dynamic Ordering Factor

Working hypothesis: An extraordinary legal concept in a legal-pluralist society becomes an essential ordering factor in a legal-pyramidal society.

The word privilege first appears in Roman antiquity to denounce a legal measure against individuals. The concept, which probably originated in the socio-political movement to enforce political equality, was interpreted by Cicero in the sense of the art of legislation according to Greek models as a law for an individual case. Its use by the imperial administration in the sense of legal prerogative increased in the classical period. On the other hand, classical jurisprudence coined the competing concept of ius singulare to designate the special rights of individual communities and groups. Its systematic use by the later imperial legislation emphasized the role of privilege in the legal order of late antiquity, and word and concept gradually emerged as a general tool for shaping legal diversity. The privileged church granted privileges as well, and in ecclesiastical legal practice, privilege gradually developed to an own legal source. Arranging the diversity of conflicting claims formulated by the different privileges became the task of legal science and practice in the medieval golden age of privileges.