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Though he had many detractors, Demosthenes was often ranked in antiquity as the greatest of the Greek orators. Demosthenes lost his father at an early age, and his estate was mismanaged by his guardians, whom he later sued in an attempt to recovery his inheritance. He began his career in the assembly in 354 bce, speaking about public finances and foreign policy, and wrote several speeches for important public cases. Starting in 351 he warned the Athenians about the dangers of Macedonian expansionism. Even though he helped to negotiate the Peace of Philocrates, he later attacked the treaty and contributed to the breakdown in Athenian relations with Philip II which led to the battle of Chaeronea in 338. Despite this defeat, he remained popular and was able to defend his reputation against the attacks of Aeschines at the trial of Ctesiphon in 330. Later convicted of bribery in the Harpalus affair, he went into exile. He subsequently returned but fled abroad again and committed suicide to avoid capture by his Macedonian pursuers.

Isaeus was a logographer (professional speechwriter) working for Athenian litigants in the 4th century bce. Eleven of his twelve extant speeches, and most of the surviving fragments, are concerned with disputed inheritance claims, while speech 12 is from a case of disputed citizenship. Hardly anything is known about Isaeus’s life; he was apparently never involved in any litigation on his own account, or in the political life of Athens, and it is not even certain whether he was an Athenian citizen or a metic. One of the ten “Attic orators” recognized in later antiquity as having classic status, he was reputed to have been a pupil of Isocrates and teacher of Demosthenes. For modern scholars his speeches are an important source of information on social history and family life in 4th-century Athens, as well as on Athenian inheritance law and legal culture, but in comparison with other Athenian orators, notably Demosthenes and Lysias, his work has been relatively neglected. Commentaries published in the last fifty years focus on individual speeches or selections, and the only comprehensive English language commentary on the entire Isaean corpus is still that of William Wyse, published in 1904. Wyse’s work remains influential, although more recent scholars have discredited his extreme scepticism about the reliability of Isaeus’s speeches as a source of Athenian law. Later research has also shed new light on the historical background to some of the speeches.

The Athenians strongly believed in the rule of law and attempted to implement this ideal in their legal procedures. Every year there were six thousand judges, who swore an oath to vote according to the laws and decrees of the Athenian people and to vote only about the charges in the indictment. There was a distinction between private cases (dikai), which could be brought only by the person who was wronged, and public cases (graphai), which could be brought by any citizen and in some cases by metics and foreigners. All cases were tried in one day. There were certain special public procedures for specific types of cases.

The Athenians of the Classical period strongly believed in the rule of law. In his Funeral Oration delivered in 322bce, Hyperides (Epitaphios 25) declares:

For men to be happy they must be ruled by the voice of law, not the threats of a man; free men must not be frightened by accusation, only by proof of guilt; and the safety of our citizens must not depend on men who flatter their master and slander our citizens but on our confidence in the law (trans. Cooper).

One of the most important decisions a litigant could make was the choice whether to submit his dispute to a private arbitrator or to go to trial. Private arbitration had several advantages because it provided a more flexible procedure and afforded the possibility of compromise solutions aimed at promoting good relations between the parties. By contrast, a trial was an all-or-nothing procedure, which created winners and losers. Nevertheless, there were disadvantages to private arbitration: the arbitrators might be reluctant to vote against a friend, or one of the parties might not agree to arbitration. Because public officials were not involved, documents might be lost. The institution of public arbitrators retained the advantages of private arbitration but avoided several of the disadvantages. Above all, it aimed to promote good relations between the parties and to avoid a bitter fight in court.

Interstate arbitration is identified by the sources as a genuine Greek tradition, attested to be from the Archaic period, that was employed and fostered by other powers, such as the Hellenistic Kings and Republican Rome. It allowed two parties in conflict to solve disputes by resorting to the judgment of a third party agreed upon by both. Its use contributed to the establishing of forms of international law, encouraging the poleis to identify a set of shared principles and rules, at least for territorial disputes, the most common kind of controversy.