Censors and Public Lands: The Failure of Governance of a Common?

Abstract Nowadays, a small part of the worldwide population, under the aegis of property on some commons, can find a way to increase their riches, intensifying the conflicts inside the society and damaging the environment. This is the “dark side” of globalization: through this phenomenon, humans economically and socially united most of our planet, simultaneously emphasizing the fragmentation that lies under this apparent unification. This conflict, however, is not between law and society, but it is inside the latter, where the only possible way to bridge the gap seems – mostly – to be through philanthropy. This work wants to find a possible enlightenment through the study of the regulation of the roman’s lands (ager publicus), which were granted under a payment: thus, they were subjected to revocation. This rule was strengthened for the most fruitful lands through the recognition of a supervisory power in the hands of the censors, census officers and controllers of the citizen’s morality, whose decadence was sanctioned with the loss of the right to vote. It was them who could decide to whom give these lands in lease through a public auction, never considering – through a direct sanction as revocation – the ethics of the winners, thus allowing to increase their assets and consequentially the social instability.