Roman Law

Legal System of Ancient Rome (c. 449 BC – AD 529)

• Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the Corpus Juris Civilis (AD 529).

• Roman law served as a basis for legal practice throughout Western continental Europe, as well as in most former colonies of these European nations, including Latin America, and also in Ethiopia.

• Roman law also denoted the legal system applied in most of Western Europe until the end of the 18th century.

• Private law comprised the Roman civil law (ius civile Quiritium) that applied only to Roman citizens, and was bonded to religion before the Twelve Tables (754–449 BC).

• The first legal text is the Law of the Twelve Tables, dating from the mid-fifth century BC.

• The adaptation of law to new needs was given over to juridical practice, to magistrates, and especially to the praetors.

• By the middle of the 3rd century, the conditions for the flourishing of a refined legal culture had become less favorable.

• The Roman Republic's constitution or mos maiorum ("custom of the ancestors") was an unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent.

• Stipulatio was the basic form of contract in Roman law. It was made in the format of question and answer.

• Rei vindicatio is a legal action by which the plaintiff demands that the defendant return a thing that belongs to the plaintiff.

• A person's abilities and duties within the Roman legal system depended on their legal status (status).

• The individual could have been a Roman citizen (status civitatis).The Legacy of Roman Law: From Litigation to Legal Practice

• Roman law can be divided into three systems of procedure: legis actiones, the formulary system, and cognitio extra ordinem.

• During the Roman Republic, the judge was usually a private person (iudex privatus) who could consult a jurist about the technical aspects of the case but was not bound by their response.

• Later on, with the bureaucratization of Roman judicial procedure, the private judge system disappeared, and was substituted by the so-called "extra ordinem" procedure.

• The codes of Justinian, particularly the Corpus Juris Civilis, continued to be the basis of legal practice in the Eastern Roman Empire throughout its so-called Byzantine history.

• Roman law, or at least some provisions borrowed from it, began to be reintroduced into legal practice, centuries after the end of the Roman empire.

• By the middle of the 16th century, the rediscovered Roman law dominated the legal practice of many European countries.

• Only England and the Nordic countries did not take part in the wholesale reception of Roman law.

• The practical application of Roman law, and the era of the European Ius Commune, came to an end when national codifications were made.

• Today, Roman law is no longer applied in legal practice, even though the legal systems of some countries are still based on the old jus commune.

• However, even where the legal practice is based on a code, many rules deriving from Roman law apply.

• For this reason, knowledge of the Roman law is indispensable to understand the legal systems of today.

• As steps towards a unification of the private law in the member states of the European Union are being taken, the old jus commune is seen by many as a model.