The study of interaction between Roman and local laws and judicial institutions in the Greek East is a rapidly developing field at the moment. New sources of the first rank have come to light within the past quarter-century, most notably the decrees from Claros in honour of Menippus and Polemaeus (SEG XXXIX.1243–4), the Customs Law of Asia (SEG XXXIX.1180), and the treaty between Julius Caesar and the Lycian League (SEG LV.1452), and the need for a new synthesis has become paramount. Important work in that direction is being done by Italian scholars, above all U. Laffi, and this reviewer has to declare an interest as he is also preparing a monograph on law in Roman Asia Minor.

Fournier's monograph, based on his 2007 thèse de doctorat supervised by O. Picard, follows in the best traditions of French epigraphic scholarship and is a major contribution to the subject. A paper announcing his key conclusions has been published separately (‘Entre droit romain et droit grec: la pratique judiciaire dans les provinces hellénophones de l'empire romain’, RHDFE 88 (2010), 165–87), but F.'s monograph abounds in acute detailed observations which will be found valuable even by those who disagree with some of his main arguments. A large number of epigraphic sources are quoted in full and discussed in detail, and his useful appendices on Cicero's letters of recommendation to governors of Asia and Achaea, litigation between Roman publicans and Greek communities, and the evidence for ‘foreign judges’ in the imperial period (to which add now SEG LIV.1103 from Mylasa) provide an excellent reference resource.

The limits which F. sets his enquiry require some comment. He constrains himself to procedural law — a sensible decision given the bias of our surviving sources and the scale of the enterprise, though in some cases it necessarily limits the scope of his analysis of the procedure. To provide a few examples: what exactly was the inheritance law at stake in a Nicaean case decided by Pliny the Younger (Plin., Ep. 10.83–4), whether the ‘astynomic law’ of Pergamum (SEG XIII.521) was still valid in Hadrian's reign, or what were the pre-annexation laws of the Cappadocians (Strabo 12.2.9) are not irrelevant to our understanding of jurisdictional matters. None of these texts is discussed by F. It should also be stressed that he comes to his topic from its Greek epigraphy, rather than Roman law side.

More importantly, F. assumes from the outset that ‘from an institutional point of view there was no real discontinuity between the cities’ of different Greek-speaking provinces outside Egypt (5), and that coverage can be safely extended to the end of the Severan age, as the constitutio Antoniniana was not a breaking point in the history of local laws under Rome. I am inclined to agree with him at least in part on the second count, and largely to disagree on the first, but my main criticism is methodological: these are not issues to be prejudged in such an enquiry and consequently there is a real danger of assuming more than is warranted by the fragmentary state of our evidence. In effect, however, F. concentrates on Achaea, Macedonia and the provinces of Western Asia Minor, for which he provides detailed regional studies, and his practice is commendably much more cautious than his initial declarations suggest.

F.'s work is organized on the institutional, rather than chronological, principle, which seems to me the least problematic way of dealing with the available material. The first part (15–256) covers the forms of provincial and then civic jurisdiction. The two chapters devoted to Roman provincial institutions do not bring much that is new; an excellent reconstruction of the assize circuit of Achaea (88–98) stands out. By contrast, the section dealing with judicial institutions of Greek cities in the Roman period (particularly chs 4–7, consisting of case-studies for Athens, Sparta, Rhodes and Mylasa) shows F. at his absolute best. It is likely to become a standard treatment for those cities. His conclusion that Roman influence on civic judicial procedures was quite limited is entirely plausible, though see now SEG LV.838 (Chersonesus Taurica).

The second part (257–501), further subdivided into two sections dealing with ‘subject’ and ‘free’ communities respectively, deals with the division of responsibilities between civic and provincial jurisdiction, using the widest possible range of evidence, including comparative material from the West. Although F.'s focus seems to be on the movement towards uniformity, he recognizes the absence of any common charter of free city privileges and rightly stresses the tension between privileges of communities and individuals. This in itself makes the essential uniformity of jurisdictional arrangements across the eastern part of the Empire very questionable, but I would go much further than F. does in emphasizing the differences between the systems of jurisdiction over ‘subject cities’ in, say, Sicily, Asia and Lycia-Pamphylia, and between judicial privileges of different free communities, in particular as concerns litigation with provincials from other communities. Much stronger stress might also be put on the resilience of privileges from earlier periods (rightly pointed out by F. in the case of Aphrodisias), which makes neat periodization difficult: that the extensive privileges of Chios are confirmed late in the reign of Augustus is of as much importance as that they originally belong to the age of the Mithridatic Wars.

In the third part (503–91) F. deals with the system of appeals to the emperor and makes a strong case for what he calls ‘inflation of the procedures’ as the local litigants tried to bring their affairs to the highest possible level, in spite of the government's attempts to restrict that.