the old English common law.3 Even the American state of Louisiana, thanks to its French heritage, has a legal system derived from the Roman heritage. Modern international law derives many of its concepts and forms from Roman traditions. Every day, in courtrooms around the world, lives and fortunes are effected by judgements rooted in the laws of Rome.
How did the law of an ancient, primitive farming community in the Tiber valley come to have such a global influence? In ancient times, of course, Roman law was spread by the Roman legions. But only its own strengths could have caused it to survive for another 15 centuries after the end of the Empire.
We may distinguish three principal elements of the Roman law: what we would call constitutional law, or the legal structure of successively the Roman kingdom, republic, and empire; criminal law; and civil law, or the law dealing with the relationships among private persons. To most of us, "law" means mainly criminal law; from "Perry Mason" to "L.A. Law," this is the sort of law usually portrayed in the media ("People's Court" is an exception). A murder trial is more dramatic than a breach- of-contract suit between two corporations. But what we now call civil law is, in fact, the principal part of the law; ten or 20 lawyers handle civil matters for every one who prosecutes or defends criminal cases. The complications, the disentanglings of rights and wrongs, are frequently far more difficult in civil cases than in criminal cases. It was in this area of civil or "private" law that Roman jurisprudence achieved its greatest triumphs.4 By comparison, what we know as criminal law did not even exist in earlier Roman times, and was generally of relatively minor importance.
By later Roman tradition, the city of Rome was founded by Romulus in 753 B.C., and was ruled by kings until the last of them, Tarquinius Superbus, "Tarquin the Proud," provoked his overthrow by his outrages i...