The Consolidation of Magisterial Law
Roman law in the early imperial age still comprised the ius civile, the original core of the civil law; and the ius honorarium, the law derived from the edicts of the jurisdictional magistrates (especially the praetors).
However, the productive strength of the magisterial edict began to weaken from the beginning of this period. As the republican magistrates' authority faded away and their cardinal functions were increasingly assumed by the emperor and his officials, magisterial initiatives became increasingly rare and the magistrates' right to alter the edicts on their own authority eroded. Any changes made in the edicts largely embraced measures introduced by other law-making agencies (leges or senatus consulta). Consequently, by the end of the first century ad the law contained in the perpetual edicts of the praetors and other magistrates became solidified and immutable. Recognizing this state of affairs, Emperor Hadrian (adlang=EN-US> 117-138) gave the jurist Salvius lulianus the task of consolidating the edictum perpetuum into final form. The edicts of the praetors, aediles and provincial governors were recast, updated and then encapsulated in a compilation that was duly approved by a senatorial resolution in about ad 130.[53] From then on, magistrates were bound to administer justice in individual cases exclusively on the basis of the codified edict; any further necessary changes had to be initiated primarily by imperial enactment.[54]Although the magisterial edict was no longer a source of new law, for a long period it was still regarded as an important source of law for legal practice. Moreover, the distinction between ius civile and ius honorarium persevered as long as the judicial system allied to these bodies of law still operated. As new forms of dispensing justice gradually replaced the republican system of legal procedure, the distinction between the two bodies of law (existing as one of form rather than substance) was obliterated. The fusion of ius civile and ius honorarium was also precipitated by the Roman jurists who gradually removed the boundaries by developing both masses of law in common. In the later imperial era the resultant combination of these two sources of law was designated ius, in contradistinction to the body of rules derived from imperial legislation known as lex.
1.4.4
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