Roman law and English law

Roman law cannot be considered an essential element of English law; however, since Roman law was known in England when Anglo-Norman law began to develop intellectually, medieval Roman law contributed to the formation and development of English common law during the twelfth and thirteenth cen­turies.

The first of these Bolognese scholars to teach in England was Magister Vacarius. Born about 1120, Vacarius studied civil law in Bologna and was called to England in about 1143 by Archbishop Theobald. Vacarius taught around 1150 at Oxford, where the main text in the school of civil law was his book on the subject, popularly called Liber pauperum [Book of the poor (students)]. Divided into nine books, the work is a collection of basic texts of the Digest and the Code, including the last three books (Tres libri). The teaching of Roman law spread from Oxford to Cambridge in the thirteenth century to train lawyers for practice in ecclesiastical courts.

Important books of the Anglo-Norman period, such as Ranulf de Glanvill’s Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus Regni Angliae [Treatise on the laws and customs of the Kingdom of England] and, especially, Henry de Bracton’s De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae [On the laws and customs of England], show the knowledge and training of two English authors in medieval Roman law. The first part of Bracton’s work contains references to about two hundred different sections of Justinian’s Compilation. Bracton realized that the best foundation for an explanation of English law was the Roman legal structure of concepts articulated by Roman jurists. Roman law also penetrated English law through canon law, which was applied in English law in church courts, especially in relation to marriage and testaments.

The revival of Roman law 95 canonical idea of equity, and indirectly the Roman one, influenced the development of English equity.

The English common law system and civil law system did not completely separate until after the Tudor period (1485-1603), when the Inns of Court had finally prevailed over academic legal institutions in relation to the education of barristers, sergeants-at-law, and judges. Nevertheless, the Court of Admiralty, the Court Star Chamber, as well as the ecclesiastical courts continued applying the principles and rules of Roman law in maritime, penal, and ecclesiastical matters.

A rebirth of interest in Roman law occurred in the sixteenth century and in the first half of the seventeenth century, when distinguished scholars such as Alberico Gentili (1552-1608) and Richard Zouche (1590-1661), among others, taught at Oxford. Although the revival was brief, the presence of Roman law continued, especially through William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law of England (1766-70), whose structure is based on the Roman division of law into matters relating to persons, things, and actions. In the nineteenth century, English judges and legal practitioners were willing to borrow rules, ideas, and concepts from the civil law tradition or even directly from Roman law.