Custom

Although classical jurists did not count custom (usus, mos, consuetudo) among the formal sources of law,^{^[915]} custom continued to play a part as a basis of the law that applied in the provinces.

The local systems of law, both written and customary, which applied in the provinces prior to the Roman conquest remained in force in the form of custom and continued to govern the social and economic life of provincial communities save insofar as they might prove embarrassing to Roman rule. References to customary law, as it applied in the provinces, can thus be found in a number of imperial constitutions, as well as in the juristic literature of this period.^{^[916]} As far as Roman law itself was concerned, custom continued to exert an indirect influence on both lawmaking and the application of the law through the interpretations of the jurists, who regarded certain long- established norms as so traditional as not to need any specific legal authority.^{^[917]} After the extension of Roman law in the provinces, following the granting of the Roman citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the empire by the constitutio Antoniniana (212 AD), many of the earlier local laws continued to apply in the form of custom if sanctioned by imperial legislation.^{^[918]}

As has been noted, the assemblies of the people continued to meet to elect magistrates and to pass laws until the close of the first century AD. However, the laws they enacted were all part of imperial policy and expressed the emperor's will. In the early years of the Principate Augustus used the popular assemblies to put through a series of important laws concerning the administration of justice (leges luliae iudiciorum publicorum et privatorum},^{^[919]} matters relating to marriage and divorce (lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus, lex Papia Poppaea},^{^[920]}[921] the criminalisation of adultery (lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis}? the penal repression of electoral corruption {lex lulia de ambituf and the operation of the senate {lex lulia de senato habendd)? Other important legislative enactments of this period included the lex Fufia Caninia (2 BC) and the lex Aelia Sentia (4 AD), both introducing restrictions on testamentary manumission, and the lex Claudia, a law passed on the proposal of Emperor Claudius, abolishing the guardianship of the next relatives {tutela legitima) over women.^{^[922]} The last known lex was an agrarian law passed in the time of Emperor Nerva (96-98 AD).^{^[923]}

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Source: Mousourakis George. The Historical and Institutional Context of Roman Law. Routledge,2003. — 480 p.. 2003

Custom

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