An overview of judges at Rome

A case could go before a panel of judges or a single judge. To a certain degree, the nature of the dispute or crime determined which was appropriate. For some sorts of cases the legal system determined the type of judge.

Judges as members of panels

We are woefully uninformed about judges who heard cases as members of pan­els. We know that recuperatores heard cases as panels of three or five individuals. Which types of cases went before recuperatores is not certain, although it appears their jurisdiction included both some private and some public matters. These cases possibly were especially urgent or included singular threats of violence.² Another group for which almost no information is available is the centumviri. In Chapter Two the physical organization of this court was discussed in some detail. While we know that these judges, 180 in total, could hear cases as four courts of 45 each or together as one court, we have little information as to how these judges were chosen in the republican period, and no idea if the same method continued to be used in the imperial period.³ The panels of judges of which we are least ill-informed are those that heard cases in the quaestiones per­petuae, the standing public courts.

The final panel of judges in Rome was the senate. As mentioned in the introduction, the senate stands as unique in Rome's legal system, and thus has been excluded from this study.⁴

Individual judges

Many of Rome's magistrates had a judicial function attached to their office and thus could judge cases of varied types as single judges. Even such minor offices as the tresviri capitales, or the decemviri stlitibus iudicandis, two of the boards within the group known collectively as the Vigintiviri, may have had judicial powers.⁵ With the beginning of the imperial period new magistrates appeared who also had judicial duties. The praefectus urbi came to have an extensive judicial function, as did the praefectus praetorio, though it seems to have developed later.⁶ The emperor himself, while not a magistrate, began to hear cases extra ordinem, a new procedure of the imperial period.⁷

By far the most commonly found single judge is the unus iudex. The major­ity of Rome's legal disputes went before a unus iudex, and it is also probable that the majority of these cases were financial in nature.⁹ Chosen in a variety of ways that are considered below, the unus iudex was provided with a formula (a docu­ment which set out the point at issue in that specific case) by the magistrate within whose jurisdiction he was appointed. He then applied this formula to the dispute placed before him. His job was to listen to the evidence and decide which side fit the terms of the formula better, thereby passing judgment. He did not determine punishment, which was set in the formula itself. One other group of single judges existed, similar to the unus iudex except in method of appointment. These were individuals who heard cases as direct representatives of the emperor or of magistrates, all of whom judged cases extra ordmemd"'