Bekanntes und Neues zum römischen Vereinsrecht

Summary Old and new insights regarding the Roman law of associations. In a new monograph, B. Zahn, Si quid universitati debetur. Forderungen und Schulden privater Personenvereinigungen im römischen Recht, 2021, argues that associations had no legal personality under Roman law. He thus challenges a well-accepted view of the term corpus as referring to legal personality of associations. The article retraces the arguments of the study with a special attention to the rich epigraphic evidence, and verifies their validity. Whereas most results of the author turn out to be well-founded, the paper attempts to deepen the interpretations of some inscriptions with regard to stipulations, fideicommissa and modus.