Roman laws
Brandon Brown
3/30/12
World Civ.
Dr. Burch
Roman Law
Roman Law is what I believe separated them from all the over ancient civilizations. Roman law,the legal system of Rome from the supposed founding of the city in 753 B.C .to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in A.D.1453;i t was later adopted as the basis of modern civil law. Most authorities,however, disregard the largely static period following the reign of Justinian I
Roman law in the earliest period known is typically expressed in the Twelve Tables with their marked formalism. The usual early procedure was also stereotyped; it was the legis actio, a form of charge and denial the words of which had to be followed exactly by the parties at the risk of losing the suit. Exact knowledge of the words constituting the legis actiones was limited to a body of patrician priests, the College of Pontiffs. The reduction of these forms to writing was a victory for the plebeians anda step in reducing the religious and formal element in the law. Soon the primary source of law became the lex , astatutory enactment that was proposed by a magistrate and accepted by a popular assembly. Among the assemblies empowered to enact leges was that of the plebeians. After the establishment of the empire, the development of lawl argely passed from the praetors (the practice of issuing new edicts ended and from the popular assemblies in to the hands of the emperors, sometimes operating through the senate. Various types of imperial enactments called constitution swere issued in abundance.
Today, Roman law is no longer applied in legal practice, even though the legal systems of some states like South Africa and San Marino are still based on the old Ius Commune . However, even where the legal practice is based on a code, many rules deriving from Roman law apply: No code completely broke with the Roman tradition. Rather, the provisions of Roman law were fitted into a more coherent system and expressed in the...