The controversy on the trichotomy “res, operae, opus” and the origin of the “locatio-conductio

Abstract

The locatio-conductio usually is explained in the immense majority of institutional texts through a trichotomy of leasing forms (loc.- cond. rei, operarum, operis), as if the roman lawyers would have coined these expressions and carefully outlined these types endowing them with a certain conceptual autonomy. The way of explaining could perhaps be valid for a first year student in the Law faculty, but at a scientific level it canŽt resist even the slightist criticism, because neither the roman lawyers nor the medieval interpreters working with the roman sources explained the leasing deferentiating conceptually those types..