ABSTRACT
What stimulated these new categories was the notion of a legal ‘interest’. Now, it is certainly true that consumer, worker and environmental interests are not to be found directly in traditional legal science. Yet, the object of Roman legal science was – as is quite specifically stated in the Digest itself44 – public and private interests (utilitas). And when this notion is associated with the Roman institution of the legal subject (persona), it can be seen that the recognition of new social realities in modern law does not require any new epistemological discourse as such. The recognition by the law of new interests is simply the application of a traditional scientific structure (persona and utilitas) to new social circumstances.
