Roman Law: Introduction Origins of Roman law
2. Origins of Roman law• When the Roman Republic was established in 509
BCE, Romans already possessed a body of customary
law (non-written law based on customs and
• This customary law ("ius") only applied to Roman
citizens and was thus called "ius civile" (civil law, law
• The citizens of Rome were divided into two classes:
Patricians (noble people) and plebeians (members of
the "plebs", the common people).
3. Political struggle leads to codification• In the early phases of Roman history, only the
patricians could hold political offices.
• Certain public officials known as "pontifices"
(pontiffs, lit. "makers of bridges") made decisions
and ruled in questions of customary law.
• Since they belonged to the same class as the
patricians, the plebeians felt that the pontiffs'
decisions were often arbitrary and leaned too much
towards the interests of the patricians.
• The plebeians pressed for the law to be written
down, so that decisions could be clearly based in the
law and not left to arbitrary decisions.
4. The Twelve Tables• As a result, in 449 BCE a legal document called the
Twelve Tables was published.
• This is the foundation of Roman law and remained
the most important legal text in the Roman state for
• The Twelve Tables included not only the law that
applied directly to citizens, but also aspects of public
law, religious law, and legal procedure.
• The Twelve Tables did not rewrite existing law or
create new law.
• Rather, they simply transferred established
customary law (ius) to a written form (lex).
6. Rome’s expansion is Roman law’s expansion• The condition of citizen of Rome was a rather
privileged one, e.g. since 167 BCE citizens didn't pay
• The expansion of the Roman state led to the
necessity of developing law that applied also to the
steadily growing number of non-citizens under
• Two new branches of law were developed: The "ius
gentium" ("law of the peoples", "law of the
nations"), and the "ius naturale" (natural law).
7. Ius gentium and ius naturale• The ius gentium was the body of laws that applied to
all people, foreigners and non-citizens as well as
citizens, and was based upon the common principles
and reasoning that civilized societies and humankind
were understood to live by and share (the idea of a ius
gentium was probably inspired by Stoicism).
• These laws common to all people were further
understood to be rooted in the ius naturale, or natural
law, a category of law based on the principles shared
by all living creatures, humans as well as animals (such
as laws pertaining to procreation, or physical defense
8. The rise of the jurists• As law became more complex along with the society
that it governed, Roman rulers found themselves in
need of a larger group of legal authorities to give
order to the system of legal formulas and decisions.
• By the second half of the 3rd century BCE, a new
professional group of specialists trained in law, the
jurists, emerged to meet this demand.
• The jurists did not participate in administering the
law, but rather focused on interpreting and
generating formal opinions on the law, as the pontiffs
had done earlier.
• The jurists were not paid for their services, but
accumulated honor and fame.
9. Roman judges• In the Roman state, judges were not legal professionals
but officials elected for one year, or private persons
nominated by the parties in a trial.
• They needed professional advice: Another reason for the
emergence and the success of the jurists.
• The jurists provided written technical advice to judges
and others about the state of the law and interpretation
of legal texts (the Twelve Tables or other).
• Their written advice was called the "responsa” (plural).
• This was the main source of legal thought and the basis
of the jurists' professional training, as the judges were
not legal professionals and their decisions were not
considered as universally binding.
10. The jurists• The 1st Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, gave even
more prestige to the jurists by granting a special
official patent to the best of them as imperial
• Their writings evolved from the responsa to more
elaborated legal treatises.
• An important figure is the jurist Gaius, who wrote a
book called Institutes, a collection of legal principles
and rules on all matters governed by private law.
• The Institutes were used both to educate students
and to assist practicians in solving individual cases.
11. Aspects of Roman law (1)• The important role of the jurists marks a clear difference
with ancient Greek law.
• The jurists, however, had mostly practical interests, they
didn’t fully develop a theoretical reflection on law and
• They provided concepts and terms that made the basis of
future theoretical development, especially during the late
• Roman law introduces a basic distinction between public
law (that is concerned with the interests of the state) and
private law (concerned with the interests of individuals).
12. Aspects of Roman law (2)• Roman jurists, however, were mostly interested in
• In private law, more than in the domain public law, are
the most important contributions of the Roman jurists
to political thought:
• In particular, within private law they elaborated the idea
of legal limits to the extension of the power (iurisdictio)
and the means of exercise of power by the magistrates.
• This represents an embryonic form of
constitutionalization of power.
13. The notion of corporation• A very important innovation by the Roman jurists was the
development of the notion of corporation = an entity
having an existence separate from that of its members
and accordingly having rights and duties separate from
• Even here there is a clear Stoic influence in helping define
a body that remains the same while its parts change, like
an army or a people.
• This allowed to think of a state or municipality as a legal
entity that exists apart from its members and having its
own personality and will.
• In embryonic form this is a modern notion of the state,
clearly separated from the people/citizens.
15. Emperor Justinian I• By the reign of the emperor Justinian I (ruled 527–
565 CE), the vast territories of the Roman Empire in
Europe, North Africa, and the East had for centuries
been politically and culturally divided into the
Western Empire and the Eastern, or Byzantine,
• The Western Empire had seen a series of Germanic
invasions that led to its final collapse by 476 CE.
• So the Roman Empire under Justinian’s rule was the
East – though during his reign, the emperor waged a
successful campaign to reconquer some of the
Western territories that had been lost to Germanic
invaders, such as Italy and parts of Spain.
17. Unifying the Empire through the Law• Justinian faced the challenge of maintaining control
and creating a sense of unity among far-flung
territories where other cultures and languages
besides Latin (such as Greek) predominated.
• One of the ways that Justinian sought to unify the
empire was through law.
• Roman citizenship had been extended to the empire
outside of Italy in the 3rd century CE, making
inhabitants of large and distant territories “citizens of
Rome” and subject to its civil law.
18. Justinian’s “Code”• Justinian formed a commission of jurists to compile all
existing Roman law into one body, which would serve
to convey the historical tradition, culture, and
language of Roman law throughout the empire.
• This compilation is sometimes referred to as
“Justinian’s Code,” but in fact the Code was only one
• The compilation of Justinian actually consisted of
three different original parts: the Digest (Digesta), the
Code (Codex), and the Institutes (Institutiones).
• In the late 16th c., these books were called “Corpus
iuris civilis” (“body of civil law”).
summarized (in 50 books!) all of the classical jurists’
writings on law and justice.
2. The Code (534 CE) outlined the actual laws of the
empire, citing imperial constitutions, legislation and
3. The Institutes (535 CE) were a smaller work that
summarized the Digest, intended as a textbook for
students of law.
4. A fourth work, the Novella (Novellae), was not a part
of Justinian’s project, but was created separately by
legal scholars in 556 to update the Code with new
laws created after 534 and summarize Justinian’s
20. The Corpus iuris civilis• After the fall of the Western Empire, Roman law was
largely forgotten for several centuries.
• Roman law experienced a revival that began at the
University of Bologna, Italy, in the 11th century and
spread throughout Europe.
• Surviving manuscript copies of Justinian’s
compilation were rediscovered and systematically
studied and reproduced.
• These new editions of the compilation, which were
later given the name Corpus iuris civilis (“body of civil
law”), became the foundational source for Roman
law in the Western tradition.
21. The roots of all civil law systems• All later systems of law in the West borrowed heavily
from it, including the civil law systems of continental
Europe, Latin America, parts of Africa. And
• To a lesser but still notable extent also the English
common law system, from which American law is
principally derived, borrowed from the Corpus iuris