Legal History Meets Digital Humanities: Seminar at Max Planck Institute

The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences (DHSS) at Nagoya University is proud to participate in an upcoming online seminar hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory on March 6, 2026.

Classics Meets Jurisprudence: Tracing Intellectual Lineage via AI

The seminar, titled “From Roman Jurisprudence to Modern Japanese Statutes: Tracing the Reception of Law via LLMs and Generative AI,” showcases an innovative collaboration between Western Classical Studies and Jurisprudence. Naoya Iwata (DHSS), a core member of Humanitext, will present findings from the interdisciplinary project “Digital Digesta.”

While modern Japanese law is rooted in European legal models derived from Roman jurisprudence, identifying the exact pathways of this reception has long been a challenge. By integrating classical scholarship with cutting-edge Large Language Models (LLMs), the project analyzes the semantic structure of the Digesta and cross-references it with structured databases of Japanese statutes. This methodology aims to elucidate the intellectual lineage connecting Roman legal thought to Japan’s modern legal order.

Event Information

This session is part of the “Legal History Meets Digital Humanities” series at the Max Planck Institute.

• Speakers: Yukiko Kawamoto, Naoya Iwata, Tomoya Sano (Nagoya University, DHSS)
• Date: March 6, 2026
• Time: 10:00 - 11:30 (CET)
• Venue: Online
• Registration: Register here

We look forward to sharing how digital humanities frameworks can offer scalable solutions for comparative legal history and the study of classical texts.