Significance of Roman law
Roman law was the legal system (ordo juris) of ancient Rome from its foundation in 753 bce, according to tradition, to the death of Emperor Justinian the Great (483-565 ce), almost one hundred years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 CE).
In the thousand years between the Law of the Twelve Tables (451-450 bce) and Justinian’s massive Codification (around 530 ce), the Romans developed the most sophisticated and comprehensive secular legal system of antiquity. Roman law is still at the heart of the civil law tradition of the European continent and some of its former colonies in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, and it was instrumental in the development of international law, the church’s canon law, and the common law tradition. Roman lawyers created new legal concepts, ideas, rules, and mechanisms that most Western legal systems still apply.The development of Roman law was gradual and always in line with the different stages of Roman constitutional history: the Monarchy (753-509 bce), the Republic (509-27 bce), the Principate (27 bce-284 ce), and the Later Empire (284-565 ce). Roman law started as a set of rules and rituals of a central Italian city-state with a citizen body of around twenty thousand people, and it became over time the legal system of a great empire with an estimated population of sixty-five to eighty million at its greatest extent in the reign of Trajan (117 ce). Gradually, Roman law began losing its local character, becoming the common law of more than a fourth of the world’s population.
Roman law represents a unique achievement in legal history. One of the most original contributions of Roman civilization to humankind, it was a characteristic product of Roman genius and probably Rome’s greatest intellectual legacy. The success of Roman law derives, in part, from its universal character; the high quality and creativity of its legal science; the power of ancient Rome; and the centuries of adaptation and refinement of Roman law by the catholic church (the legal technique and structure of canon law are basically distilled from Roman law).
The success of Roman law also lay in its ability to live in harmony with the rules and institutions of other legal systems and cultures.Roman law reached an unprecedented balance between justice and fairness, natural and civil justice, private and public interest, moral authority (auctoritas) and coercive power (potestas), judicial flexibility and legal certainty, grammar and intention, tradition and innovation, simplicity and scholarship, and abstraction and casuistry. Roman law constitutes a perennial model for the appropriate development of legal systems for all times, as well as a foundational pillar of emerging global law. Roman law offers a good example of how a legal system can be developed and modernized based on equitable ideas and principles. For these reasons, among others, Roman law still commands the respect and admiration of independent legal thinkers and practitioners of different legal traditions as a unique tradition of legal thought.
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