Fifteenth IRLM (2022)

The Fifteenth International Roman Law Moot was hosted by the Εθνικόν και Καποδιστριακόν Πανεπιστήμιον Αθηνών, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, from 6 to 10 April 2022. The logo for the event, inspired by a dramatic mask of the fourth century BCE now in the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus, was chosen to allude to the facts of the libellus, to honour the location of the Moot, and to reclaim for a joyous in-person event an image that, during the pandemic, had been the emblem of social distancing.

The facts of the libellus, set amongst many of the most important monuments of Athens, concerned the purchase of a familia of slave-actors that went sour in the context of a mysterious corona disease, which raced across the empire from Alexandria and forced the authorities to lock down the city, even after the scholar Pfizerius developed a concoction that, applied via a small incision to the arm of a healthy person, helped prevent severe illness. The actio redhibitoria and actio quanti minoris claims set students to scour the Digest for applicable and analogous texts.

The preliminary and semi-final rounds of the competition unfolded at the foot of the Acropolis in the historic Athens University History Museum, the original home of the NKUA, the first modern university in the eastern Mediterranean. For the Small and Grand Final, the Moot was accorded the exceptional privilege of using the Stoa of Attalos in the heart of the ancient agora of Athens, near to the site where the great Athenian jury-court, the Heliaia, sat. 

The Grand Final was filmed, and the recording can be viewed online here.

The Fifteenth Moot was made possible by support from: the Greek Society of Legal Historians; the Property Development and Management Company of the University of Athens; the Master’s Program of Legal History of the Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; the Law Firms Zepos & Yannopoulos, Karatzas & Partners, and Potamitis Vekris; the Central Archaeological Committee of Greece of the Greek Ministry of Culture; the Ephorate of Antiquities of the City of Athens; and the Museum of the University of Athens.