An ancient element of family law: cognatio

Abstract

The most ancient roman texts are already legal expressions and, therefore, belong to the time in which the concept of collectivity in a wide sense prevailed over the one focused on the familiy and its spontaneous organizations. The jurists occupy themselves with the coercive institutions and thus disregard the initiation rites, through which the familiy distinguished the insiders and outsiders. Cognatio was the rite that determined who was inside the familiy..