Roman Law

Roman Law is called the legal order that governed the society of Ancient Rome , from its foundation (in 753 BC) until the fall of the Empire in the 5th century AD. C., although it remained in use in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) until 1453.

It was compiled as a whole in the 6th century by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I into a volume of laws known as the Corpus Juris Civilis (“Body of Civil Law“), and first printed by Dionysius of Godfrey in 1583 in Geneva. .

This text and the laws contained therein are of extreme importance in the legal history of mankind , since they served as the basis for the legal texts of multiple other cultures and civilizations. So much so that there is even a branch of law specialized in its study, called romance, with offices in law schools in several countries.

To fully understand Roman law, it is convenient to examine its characteristics and its history, but in broad terms it can be understood from the concept of ius (“law”), contrasted with fas (“divine will”), thus separating for the first instead the legal exercise of religion . This will allow for the emergence of the various branches of law : ius civile (“civil law”), ius naturale (“natural law”), etc., many of which still exist today.

History of Roman Law

The history of Roman law spans over a thousand years of legislation and changes in understanding law and legality , since the first appearance of the Law of the Twelve Tables in 439 BC. C. approximately, until the Justinian Code of 529 d. C. Its birth comes from custom (which would inspire customary law) and would emerge as a model for regulating society that would guarantee social peace before commoners and the hierarchy that supported emperors and praetors for equality. And the Senate.

Let’s remember that the Roman Republic constantly oscillated between democracy and dictatorship , to end up becoming an Empire that would conquer almost the entire Western world, taking its law to every corner it colonized. Thus, Roman law became the underpinning of the legality of Roman colonies in Europe , Asia and Africa , and this is reflected in the legal history of each kingdom into which the Roman Empire was divided after its collapse.

Some of the leading jurists and scholars of law in ancient Rome were Gaius, Papinian, Ulpian, Modestino, and Paul.

Periods of Roman Law

The history of Roman law is usually divided into the following periods:

• The monarchical period. It stretches from the middle of the 8th century BC. C., with the foundation of Rome, until the year 509 a. C. when King Tarquinius the Proud, whose despotic government was the last exercised by the Roman kings, is expelled from the city , giving rise to the Roman Republic.
• The republican period. It begins with the fall of the monarchy in the early 5th century BC. C. and culminates with the granting by the Roman Senate of absolute powers to Octavio Augusto in the year 27 a. During this period, the Law of the XII Tables was published, giving formal beginnings to Roman Law and building a State of balanced powers: a group of magistrates was democratically elected in popular assemblies, in charge of the assigned functions; while the Senate was in charge of issuing Senate consultations with the force of law.
• The period of the principality. It begins in the year 27 a. C. after the political crisis that affected the Republic and allowed the emergence of an authoritarian State, subject to the will of the auctoritas of the Prince or Emperor, such as Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD), Caligula (37-41 AD), Nero (54 -68 AD) among others. Rome reached its maximum territorial extension in this period: 5 million square kilometers.
• The period of the dominated. Also known as the Absolute Empire, it began in the middle of the second century AD. Until the year 476, when the Western Roman Empire collapses and disappears. It is a time of absolute state power, in the hands of the Emperor, who rules through imperial constitutions. In the year 380 the Empire assumed Christianity as the official religion and was later divided into two parts, from which the Eastern Roman Empire was born.
• The Justinian Period. Also called the Government of Justinian, it runs from 527 to 565 AD. C., and it is the moment when the Justinian compilation of Roman Law is published in the year 549, marking the end of its history. After Justinian’s death , the Byzantine Empire was erected, a very medieval state, which lasted until the 15th century, when it fell to the Turks.

Sources of Roman law

Like all aspects of law, Roman has its sources, which we can study separately as follows:

• The mos Maiorum. “The custom of the ancestors” is the first of the sources of Roman law. It is constituted by custom (common law), through a set of rules inherited from ancestral tradition and venerated in Ancient Rome, which were transmitted in the family and which served to contrast Roman traditions with Hellenizing or Asian ones.
• Justinian sources. Those compiled by Emperor Justinian I in his work Corpus iuris civilis, which include: The code or Codex (vetus) which compiled the imperial constitutions; The summary or Pandects which contain a chronological order of the various subjects, in chronological order across 50 different books; the Institutions or Institutes that contain a synthesis of doctrines and precepts in four books that constitute an elementary treaty of law; The Justinian Code or “The New Code”, which is the version commissioned by the Emperor to John of Cappadocia, inspired by all of the above; and, finally, the Romances that make up the definitive code promulgated by Justiniano.
• Extra-Justinian sources. They comprise two sets of texts unrelated to Justinian’s work:
  • Fragments of jurists from the classical period. How are the institutions of Gayo; the Fragments of Paul’s Sententiarium libri V ad filium; the Title ex corpore Ulpiani whose author is unknown; very sparse parts of the Papianiano Responsa; an appendix to Dositheus’s Ars grammatica; and the Scholia sinaitica discovered on Mount Sinai.
  • The collection of other imperial constitutions. Like the Vatican Fragmenta, which are the remains of a private collection of passages from classical jurists and imperial laws found in a palimpsest in the Vatican Library.

Characteristics of Roman law

Roman law, very broadly, distinguished various ways of understanding law . Not only, as already said, between ius (“law”) and fas (“divine will”), but also between public law , which regulates state action and guarantees the general welfare of citizens ; and private law , which regulates the agreements and transactions between them, in view of the idea of ​​justice defended by the institutions .

Similarly, it differentiated two fundamental concepts: Ius (“right”), that which is just and equitable in itself and therefore obligatory ; and Lex (“Law”), that which is enacted or enacted in writing by state authorities. The entire body of Roman law was inspired by this opposition.

We should also note that for Roman law, human beings were not necessarily citizens , but those whom the law recognized as such, with slaves excluded from any right. Thus, there were three forms of citizenship based on their degree of freedom :

• Free people. Those who always were (Ingenues) and those who earned their freedom after being slaves (Libertines).
• Settlers. They were in an intermediate state between freedom and slavery , condemned for life to the cultivation of the Roman territories, and to whose desertion they became slaves.
• Slaves. People who didn’t own themselves, but were part of other people’s heritage.

Although they were not at the level of slaves or settlers, women occupied a subordinate place in this legal system in relation to men.

Importance of Roman Law

Roman law is not only the basis of the constitutions of the western and eastern countries (especially their civil and commercial law) that were part of the Roman colonial Empire, but also embodied the statutes of the Catholic Church that governed its functioning even in the Middle Ages, when the Roman Empire had already dissolved.

Almost all republican institutions that exist today have their origin in Roman law and also in many legal systems, such as Anglo-Saxon common law.