Il rito e la form(ul)a. Contributo minimo a una genealogia della ragione giuridica

In the Western tradition, law is an autonomous social system, characterized by abstraction and formalism. The concept of form is fundamental in every juridical theory: a crucial invention that we find in the ancient history of ius and the Roman legal science (more than in the Greek praxis and philosophical investigation on nómos and justice). This paper focuses upon the origin and meaning of this “formal rationality”, especially with reference to its emergence in two different experiences of the Roman civil trial (legis actiones and agere per formulas).