The Development of Roman Law

Scholars conventionally treat the development of Roman law as having undergone three major phases: the Republic, the Principate, and the Dominate. The Republic (510 B.C.) represented the birth of codification and legal thought, and a period of limited direct participation by the people in the lawmaking process. Under the Principate (27 B.C.), the participation of the people was all but eliminated, in favor of the emperor's control over most of the state machinery. While the Principate emperors' absolutism was disguised behind a facade of Republicanism, the Dominate period (284 A.D.) saw no attempts to hide the fact of imperial totalitarianism.

The early Roman Republic was characterized by the "Struggle of the Orders," an ongoing cleavage between patricians and plebeians. Patricians enjoyed numerous advantages over plebeians, not only economically but socially and politically as well. A patrician creditor was all but guaranteed victory in any legal dispute with his plebeian debtor, by virtue of the fact that all magistrates were of the patrician class (Wolff 57). Most Romans were not aware of their rights under the law, nor indeed of the specific provisions of the law, as the law was kept in the custody of the College of Pontiffs, another patrician body (Hunter 8).

The Twelve Tables (circa 451 B.C.), a list of laws inscribed on bronze plaques, are believed to have been the first true Roman legislation (Wolff 55), and grew out of the plebeians' demand to know their rights

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anting or refusing legal remedies"(Hunter 14). Already a potent instrument, the edict was not even binding upon the praetor who issued it: he could deviate from his own proclaimed set of rules without censure (Wolff 81). The establishment of the empire, however, saw the end of such discretion on the part of praetors. Historians divide the Empire into two periods, that of the Principate and that of the Dominate. The Principate, beginning with Augustus, ruled under the guise of Republicanism. Even during the 1st century A.D., some laws were still enacted by the vote of the people (Wolff 69), but the sheer size of the empire and the attendant population explosion had eliminated the efficacy of direct participation long before. The bulk of legislative activity had passed to the senate, whose resolutions were enacted in the form of senatus consulta. It is said in history books that the senate was but a "mouthpiece of the emperor"(Wolff 69), and that the emperor was the main, if not sole, agent of legislation in this period. During the era of the early Republic, ordinary citizens as well as magistrates (Hunter 10) had relied on jurisconsults to inform and advise them on matters of law. These men occupied a prestigious place in Roman

Category: History - T