Governing from Republic to Empire
Scholars conventionally treat the development of Roman law as having undergone three major phases: the Republic, the Principate, and the Dominate. The Republic (510 B.C.) represented the birth of codification and legal thought, and a period of limited direct participation by the people in the lawmaking process. Under the Principate (27 B.C.), the participation of the people was all but eliminated, in favor of the emperor's control over most of the state machinery. While the Principate emperors' absolutism was disguised behind a facade of Republicanism, the Dominate period (284 A.D.) saw no attempts to hide the fact of imperial totalitarianism.
The early Roman Republic was characterized ...
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was kept in the custody of the College of Pontiffs, another patrician body (Hunter 8).
The Twelve Tables (circa 451 B.C.), a list of laws inscribed on bronze plaques, are believed to have been the first true Roman legislation (Wolff 55), and grew out of the plebeians' demand to know their rights and the laws they lived under. Its provisions are mainly procedural, stating for example that "[a]fter midday, the cause shall be adjudged to the party present [in a lawsuit] if the other has failed to appear" (Wigmore 375). The fact that this code was not moral in nature, like the Ten Commandments, demonstrates departure from the conception of law as merely an aspect of religious duty, and commencement of legal thought as a distinct field in itself.
In 367 B.C., the plebeians' struggle for equality was met with the leges Liciniae Sextiae, which stated that one of the Consuls selected each year must be a plebeian. The Consuls held an extremely high office, presiding over the ...
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claims, did the same for aliens...we know that in 242 B.C. alien business had grown to such dimensions that a new office, especially charged with jurisdiction over aliens, was created; namely, that of the praetor peregrinus or alien praetor (Wolff 71).
The office of praetor was a particularly influential one with respect to the evolution of Roman law. While the civil legal tradition was rigidly formal and conservative, the praetor was invested with the power to interpret the law, and thus to amend it or adapt it to existing circumstances. This power is clearly seen in the praetorial edict, in which a praetor, upon taking office, stated "the rules by which he would guide himself in ...
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"Governing from Republic to Empire." Essayworld.com. March 10, 2011. Accessed April 20, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Governing-from-Republic-to-Empire/95836.
"Governing from Republic to Empire." Essayworld.com. March 10, 2011. Accessed April 20, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Governing-from-Republic-to-Empire/95836.
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