Il Processo ateniese. Tra principio di legalità e ‘judge-made law’

According to a common trend of thought, still in the fourth century BC the Athenian legal system would consist in an open order, where nomoi would represent either evidence submitted to the free conviction of the lay judge (and not a type of formaler Beweis), or even mere facades for judicial initiatives exclusively directed to control social hierarchies. On the contrary, Athens would recognise judicial free evaluation as the only authentic normative formant. Against this reconstruction, after investigating the role concretely held by nomoi (interpreted as foundations of any judicial activity) within the frame of the Athenian legal procedure, as well as the powers exercised by jurisdictional archai and dikasteria, one will attempt to verify and enhance the opposing view, above all in the light of the so-called dikastic oath: classical Athens would grant as a principle, and not as a slogan, the rule of law, which Pindar powerfully and poetically described in the cosmic terms of nomos panton basileus.