The Cambridge History of Rights: Volume 1, The Ancient World

Clifford Ando is Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Classics and History at the University of Chicago. He is the author, translator, or editor of twenty-one books, including Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (2000), Law, Language, and Empire in the Roman Tradition (2011), and Roman Social Imaginaries (2016). Mirko Canevaro is Professor of Greek History at the University of Edinburgh. His research has been funded by, among others, the European Research Council, UKRI, and a Philip Leverhulme Prize. He is author or editor of fifteen books, including The Documents in the Attic Orators (2013) and Commentaries of Demosthenes' Against Leptines (2016) and Aristotle's Politics 4 (2014) and 7-8 (2022). Benjamin Straumann is ERC Professor of History at the University of Zurich and Research Professor of Classics at New York University. He is also Alberico Gentili Senior Fellow at New York University School of Law. The recipient of a European Research Council grant, he is the author of Roman Law in the State of Nature (2015); Crisis and Constitutionalism (2016); and The Just State: Greek and Roman Theories of Justice and Their Legacy in Western Thought (2025).

• Introduction Clifford Ando, Mirko Canevaro and Benjamin Straumann; 1. To claim to protect claims: the generative discourse of Mesopotamian legal rights Seth Richardson; 2. The individual and the communal: early Confucian resources for human rights May Sim; 3. human rights in the Hebrew Bible? Sandra Jacobs; 4. Greek subjective rights? Justice, legal discourse, and legal institutions Mirko Canevaro and Linda Rocchi; 5. Aristotle on subjective rights Pia Campeggiani; 6. Do rights exist in Hellenistic philosophy? Jon Miller; 7. Rights in Ptolemaic Egypt Nadine Grotkamp; 8. Rights in Roman Republican thought Valentina Arena; 9. Ius in the subjective sense in classical Roman law Charles Donahue, Jr; 10. Rights and dignity in late ancient thought Kyle Harper; 11. Rights in late ancient law? Noel Lenski; 12. Rabbinic Judaism Alyssa M. Gray; 13. Sasanian law Maria Macuch.