ROMAN LAW

Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome. The development of Roman law covers more than one thousand years from the law of the twelve tables (from 449 BC) to the Corpus Juris Civilis of Emperor Justinian I (around 530).

Roman law in a broader sense refers not only to the legal system of ancient Rome, but also to the law that was applied throughout most of Western Europe until the end of the 18th century. The influence of Roman law is shown by the wealth of legal terminology, retained by all legal systems.

It is impossible to know exactly when the Roman legal system began. The first legal text, the content of which is known to us in some detail, is the law of the twelve tables, which date from the middle of the 5th century BC. The common people proposed that the law should be written down in order to prevent magistrates from applying the law in an arbitrary fashion. After years of struggle the plebeians convinced the patricians to send a delegation to Athens to copy out the Laws of Solon. Ten Roman citizens were chosen to record the laws. For the period in which the delegates performed this task, they were given supreme political power, while the power of the magistrates was restricted. The Law of the Twelve Tables thus drafted was accepted by the popular assembly. This code set forth simple rules suitable for an agricultural community; it established equal law for patricians and plebs and was prized by the Romans as the source of all public and private law. The legal system established under this code, and the body of rules that developed around it, applied exclusively to Roman citizens and was known as the jus civile.

Conquest over the Mediterranean basin compelled the Romans to work out a new system of law. Each conquered territory had its own system, and a body of law was required that would be applicable to both citizens and subject s. Between about 367 bc and ad137 the new law was developed from the edicts of the praetor, or magistrate, who defined and interpreted the law in individual cases. This new legal system was known as the jus gentium. The extension of citizenship during the years from 100 bc to ad 212 to all free inhabitants of the Roman Empire made the distinction between the jus gentium and the jus civile obsolete, and the jus civile of Rome became the law of the empire.

In the 3rd century ad the decrees or laws issued by the emperors gained increasing importance in the Roman legal system. Around 530 ad emperor Justinian I appointed a committee of ten jurists to make an official digest of the older law. The law books published by Justinian are collectively known as the Corpus Juris Civilis.

Early in the 12th century a thorough study of these texts was inaugurated at Bologna and spread throughout Europe. With the revival of European commerce and the inadequacy of medieval law to meet the requirements of the changing economic and social conditions, Roman law became incorporated in the legal systems of the many continental European countries.

However, Rome’s most important contribution to European legal culture was not the enactment of well-drafted statutes, but the emergence of a class of professional jurists and of a legal science. This was achieved in a gradual process of applying the scientific methods of Greek philosophy to the subject of law, a subject which the Greeks themselves never treated as a science.

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