in the Digest, with the borrowing of Roman law, fiercely Christian Byzantium appears to be godless. The law may not have been transformed, but the society had been. I also note in the talk that ius gentiumis confusingly used with several meanings in the Institutes. Unsurprisingly, the main text has been mistranslated to this day. Of course, frailties in the text of the Institutes were noticed early, and later accounts of natural law take Christianity especially into account. Still the need for authority is so great that strong traces of Justinian, including illogicalities, remain. As illustrations I look at two very different institutional writings fromth century Scotland, those of Lord Stair and Sir George Mackenzie. Along the way I bring in the strong impact of authority for legislation even in a totalitarian state such as Nazi Germany. I have a lengthy appendix on Rudolf Sohm whose Iustitutionen was first published inand in a later edition it is still in print. The long quotation is entirely proto-Nazi: law is for the preservation of the Volk, the people, not for the security of the individual. Only, Volk is not defined as it was later as the Aryan community. My interest in this is precisely that Sohm’s book is on Roman private law, was the standard textbook for first-year law students, and would be well-known to all law professors, practicing lawyers, law students and Nazi party officials, including Hans Frank the first president of the Academy for German Law. The law in the quotation is far removed from Roman private law. My contention is that Nazi law was easier to accept by the German legal elite because the principles on which it was based were already treated as correct and vital in a basic teaching book. So, obviously, it is wholly appropriate. Olivia Robinson has urged me that there should be a separate chapter on this subject. I agree, but with reluctance and resignation I accept that I have not the necessary skill or knowledge to show exactly how Sohm impacted on Nazi
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