PREFACE In late 1999, I gave a talk at a famous Sicilian University. Afterwards I had lunch with faculty and doctoral students. Subsequently, 1 invited these students to have dinner with me. One of them, Lorenzo,' knowing my passion for Roman law, courteously insisted his law school was old-fashioned; the basic curriculum contained three compulsory courses of Roman law, and not even one optional course on the law of the European Union. Still courteously, he insisted that the Roman law courses should be abolished, and law of the Uuropean Union replace them. His colleagues, rather more shyly, concurred. Lorenzo was talking of one law school, thinking it unique in being out-of-step with legal reality. Not so! d'hat legal education fails to deal with fundamental concerns is a common phenomenon, rhus, when I taught at O.xford from i9>'7 to i96> there were, in the first law degree, two compulsory courses in Roman law and one optional which was taken by the \ ast majority of saidents — the alternatixe was Lnglish Legal 1 listorv. For the higher degree of b.c.l. all students had to stud\- Roman ownership and possession. O.xford 1 Sadly, I never discovered his last name. 13
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