The Handbook is intended to survey the landscape of contemporary research and chart principal directions of future inquiry. Its aim is to bring to bear upon Roman legal study the full range of intellectual resources of contemporary legal history, from comparison to popular constitutionalism, from international private law to law and society. This unique contribution of the volume sets it apart from others in the field.Furthermore, the volume brings the study of Roman law into closer alignment, and thus into dialogue, with historical, sociological, and anthropological research in law in other periods. The volume is therefore directed not simply to ancient historians and legal historians already focused on the ancient world, but to historians of all periods interested in law and its complex and multifaceted relationship to society.