Admiralty Roman law: legal discipline oj jettison

Author(s)

Rodrigo de Lima Vaz Sampaio

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Direito (FD/SBD)
• Defense date: 2013-08-02

Examining board members

Eduardo Cesar Silveira Vita Marchi; Rodrigo Fernandes More; Marco Fabio Morsello; Darcio Roberto Martins Rodrigues; Marcos Takaoka

• Advisor: Eduardo Cesar Silveira Vita Marchi

Abstract

The jettison is a specific Admiralty (Roman) Law institution. It means the sacrifice of cargo or ship instruments in order to save both from shipwreck. Its effect is the splitting damages between the involved parts (contributio), which characterizes, in time, the gross average. In the Digest, it\'s possible to find (almost) all elements that constitute it. Among them, the intentionality of the act is debated, it means, who can decide about that disposal. Once they agreed with the locatio conductio to patronize the institution, the Roman jurists chose the magister navis [= \"captain of the ship\"] as the only common link between all interested parts in the occurrence and, therefore, capable of making this call (D. 14, 2, 2 pr.). Nonetheless, they also considered the existence of a deliberative commission, composed by the onboard merchants and passengers, who should be consulted (D. 14, 2, 2, 1). From the doubt whether the intentional act refers to the magister navis or also to the deliberative commission, a game of power unveils, conditioning the lex Rhodia reading. Determining the role played by each one of these characters in the jettison is necessary to know its concept in the Justinian period and help to comprehend this aspect in the posterior Admiralty Law tradition. (AU)