Some comments on the character of the Justinianic codification

The outstanding feature of Justinian's reign is its focus on the idea of unity - unity in territory, in religion, in law. In this respect, the compilations of law made under his authority should be viewed as interconnected parts of an organic whole.

Through the codification of the law Justinian sought to produce, on the basis of the legal inheritance of the past, a complete and authoritative statement of the law of his own day that would replace all former statements of law in both juridical literature and legislation. In this way he hoped to make the law uniform throughout the empire and, at the same time, to preserve the best of classical jurisprudence, displacing the diffuse mass of legal materials that had caused so much confusion in the past. The tendency towards a return to the classical sources that characterises Justinian's legislative work reflects his ambition to restore the empire to its former greatness. It is also connected with the revival of legal learning in the law schools of the East, where the works of the classical Roman jurists were studied and held in respect.

Justinian's intention to produce a living system of law based on classical foundations is particularly evident in the Digest, the largest and perhaps most important part of his codification. But having been completed in such haste and involving such a massive reduction of the classical texts, the work was in many respects imperfect and, contrary to Justinian's instructions, reproduced contradictions and repetitions which were exacerbated by the mutilation and alteration of the original texts. As a result, the law it contained was neither the authentic law of the classical period nor an accurate statement of the law of Justinian's own day, but a layered amalgam which ignored many of the post-classical changes.

As such it was in many respects alien to current conditions and practices and thus very difficult to use in practice as a source of law. It should therefore come as no surprise that, despite Justinian's orders to the contrary, his compilations were translated into Greek, abbreviated, commented upon and continuously modified for use in the Byzantine East.^{^{style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;color:black'>[1297]}}[1298] In the West, where Germanic kingdoms had overrun the empire, Justinian's legislative work was in the course of time largely forgotten. It was to take nearly five centuries before it was re-discovered and made the object first of academic study and, subsequently, of far-reaching reception, i.e. a reintegration as valid law in large parts of western Europe.

With the codification of Justinian comes to an end the first period of the history of Roman law. Although he failed to achieve his cherished goal of rebuilding the old Roman empire, Justinian did succeed in collecting together and preserving for the future the bulk of the Roman legal heritage - an immense body of imperial laws and juristic literature stretching back over hundreds of years of legal development. Whatever its limitations, the Corpus Juris Civilis is one of the greatest monuments of legal activity the world has known. It was of tremendous importance in later western Europe where it supplied the common ground upon which the civil law systems of most Continental European countries were built. As a historical source, it provides a comprehensive picture of the way in which Roman law and legal thinking evolved from the first century BC up to the sixth century AD and says a great deal about the state of the law and society during the early Byzantine era.^{^[1299]}

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

Some comments on the character of the Justinianic codification

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