What Were the Roman Laws Called
Modern scholars tend to question the accuracy of Latin historians. They generally do not believe that a second decemirate ever took place. It is believed that the Decemvirate of 451 contained the most controversial points of customary law and assumed the leading functions in Rome. [4] In addition, questions of Greek influence on early Roman law are still much debated. Many scholars consider it unlikely that the patricians sent an official delegation to Greece, as Latin historians believed. Instead, these scholars suspect that the Romans acquired Greek legislation from the Greek cities of the Magna Graecia, the main portal between the Roman and Greek worlds. [4] The original text of the Twelve Tablets has not been preserved. The tablets were probably destroyed when Rome was conquered and burned by the Gauls in 387 BC. [4] The adaptation of the law to new needs has been entrusted to legal practice, in particular to judges and lenders. A praetor was not a legislator and technically did not create a new law when he issued his edicts (magistratuum edicta). In fact, the results of its judgments enjoyed legal protection (actionem dare) and were often the source of new laws. The successor of a praetor was not bound by the edicts of his predecessor; However, he adopted rules drawn from the edicts of his predecessor that had proved useful. In this way, a constant content was created, which went from edict to edict (Edictum traslatitium).
The Twelve Tablets were not a reform or liberalization of old practices. Rather, they recognized the prerogatives of the patrician class and patriarchal family, the validity of slavery for unpaid debts, and the interference of religious customs in civil affairs. That they reveal a liberality in testamentary rights and treaties, remarkable for their time, is probably not the result of innovations among the Decemvirs, but rather of the progress made in Rome at a time of prosperity and commerce animated by commercial customs. Since the reign of Hadrian, the judgments and declarations of the emperor have been collected in the constitutions of the emperor or Constitutiones Princip. In addition, the Senate could also enact regulations (senatus consulta), for example on public games or on women`s inheritance rights. Statutory law promulgated by the people through public assemblies (comitia), although rare, could also contribute to the body of law, but was generally limited to ceremonial matters such as the decision on posthumous honors to be granted to the children of emperors who died prematurely. In many cases, particularly in civil cases, an heir might be required to take the place of the original defendant if the original defendant died before the end of the proceedings. In the Republic, there were no real legal remedies in Roman law, but in imperial times, disgruntled parties could turn to the emperor or high officials, and the initial decision could be overturned or overturned. However, appeals without just cause may be subject to sanction. An important element of Roman law was jurists (iurisprudentes), legal experts who subjected laws, rules, and written institutions to intellectual examination and discussion in order to extract the fundamental legal principles they contained, and then applied and tested these principles to hypothetical special cases and then applied them to new laws. Jurists were an elite corps, as there were probably fewer than 20 at any given time and their qualification for the role was their in-depth knowledge of the law and its history.
In imperial times, they were incorporated into the general bureaucracy that served the emperor. Jurists also had a kind of monopoly on legal knowledge, as the opportunity to study law as part of the usual curriculum was not possible until the middle of the 2nd century AD. Jurists also wrote legal treatises, one of the most influential being On Civil Law (De Iure Civili) by Q. Mucius Scaevola in the 1st century BC. While jurists often came from the upper echelons of society and, perhaps inevitably, dealt with the issues most relevant to this elite, they also dealt with two fundamental social principles in their deliberations: equity (aequitas) and practicality (utilitas). Moreover, because of their intellectual monopoly, jurists had much more independence from politics and religion than was common in ancient societies. From the 3rd century AD, however, the legal system was replaced by more direct intervention by those who ruled, especially by the emperor himself. Gradually, the number of legal experts and lawyers grew more and more like modern lawyers, who could be consulted by anyone who needed legal advice. However, unlike modern lawyers, they offered their services for free, at least in principle. A core of the Jacob Burns Law Library`s special collections is the Roman Law Collection. As the basis on which many legal systems in Western Europe have been developed, our Roman Law Collection supports a number of our other special collection forces, including the French and Canon Law Collections. This is the traditional view of events, although, perhaps more realistically, the composition of the paintings was an attempt by the elite to govern themselves better and prevent abuses within their own social group.
In any case, the result was a list of written laws (legibus scribundis) presented on ten tables, and two more were added the following year to bring the total to twelve. Subsequently, laws became laws, that is, they were promulgated only after a decision of a legislative body and were no longer based on mere custom and tradition. When the center of the empire was moved to the Greek East in the 4th century, many legal terms of Greek origin appeared in official Roman legislation. [8] Influence is also visible in personal or family law, which is traditionally the part of the law that changes the least. For example, Constantine began to limit the ancient Roman concept of patria potestas, the power of the male head of the family over his descendants, by recognizing that the people in the potestate, the descendants, could have property rights. He apparently made concessions to the much stricter concept of paternal authority under Greek Hellenistic law. [8] The Codex Theodosianus (438 AD) was a codification of constant laws. Later, the emperors went even further until Justinian finally decreed that a child of Potestate would become the owner of everything he had acquired, unless he had acquired something from his father. [8] The Twelve Tablets (also known as the Law of the Twelve Tablets) were a series of laws inscribed on 12 bronze tablets written in 451 and 450 BC. Created in ancient Rome. They marked the beginning of a new approach to the laws that were now passed and written by the government so that all citizens before them could be treated equally. Today, Roman law is no longer applied in legal practice, although the legal systems of some countries such as South Africa and San Marino are still based on the former municipality of ius.
But even when legal practice is based on a code, many rules derived from Roman law apply: no code has completely broken with Roman tradition. On the contrary, the provisions of Roman law have been inserted into a more coherent system and expressed in the national language. For this reason, knowledge of Roman law is essential to understanding today`s legal systems. Thus, Roman law is often still a compulsory subject for law students in civil law jurisdictions. In this context, the Moot Court of International Law has been developed annually to better educate students and to network with each other internationally. [12] [13] [14] Other collections of laws include the 3rd century Codex Gregorianus (published around 292 AD) and the Codex Hermogenianus (published 295 AD), both named after eminent jurists during the reign of Diocletian, and together comprise more than 2,500 texts. There is also the Theodosian Codex, a collection of more than 2,700 laws compiled in the 430s and completed in the following years, and finally the Codex Iustinianus (528-534 AD), which summarizes and develops the older codices. In the West, Justinian`s political authority never went further than parts of the Italian and Hispanic peninsulas. In the legal texts published by the Germanic kings, however, the influence of the early Eastern Roman codes on some of them is quite recognizable. In many early Germanic states, Roman citizens were still governed by Roman law for some time, even though members of the various Germanic tribes were governed by their respective codes. The codices of Justinian, especially the Corpus Juris Civilis (529-534), continued to form the basis of legal practice in the empire during so-called Byzantine history.
Leo III the Isaurian issued a new code, the Ecloga,[9] at the beginning of the 8th century. In the 9th century, Emperors Basil I and Leo VI the Wise commissioned a combined translation of the Codex and the Digest, parts of the Justinian codes, into Greek, which became known as the basilica. Roman law, as preserved in the codes of Justinian and in the basilica, remained the basis of legal practice in Greece and in the courts of the Eastern Orthodox Church even after the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the conquest by the Turks and, together with the Syro-Roman code of law, also formed the basis of much of the Fetha Negest. which remained in force in Ethiopia until 1931.
