l law which was common to all living beings, somewhat like the notion of natural law. The second division was into written and unwritten law. Written law was that produced by the legislative bodies or other public authorities while unwritten law was not. The third division was between public law and private law. Public law regulated the organization of public authority and the relations between the State and individuals; private law regulated the relations between private individuals. This last division is similar to the distinction between tort law and criminal law in Anglo-American common law. All of these distinctions found their way, in one form or another, into Western European law.
The most important and developed part of Roman law dealt with private law. As a developing society, Rome needed a system whereby domestic peace was preserved. This was done by regulating the relationships between individuals and providing them with the means to enforce their private rights. Thus, Roman private law evolved as a system of actions, comprised of the rights and claims of individuals, which were protected by their own specific procedural remedy. The constructive and analytical work of praetors and jurists dealt almost exclusively with private law and this tradition was passed on to Europe. In contrast, criminal law and procedure never attained the same sort of importance in Roman law. Indeed, criminal justice resembled private law in the sense that in the early period of Roman history it was up to the relatives of a murder victim to initiate the legal proceedings against the defendant.
Much has been said of the disappearance of Roman law after the decline of the Empire in the Fifth Century. In the West, the empire was gradually overrun by Germanic tribes who had developed their own systems of law, albeit ones not nearly so highly developed as that of the Romans. Thus, it was traditionally assumed that Roman law was rep...