Sources and Historical Development of Roman Law

Abstract

The history of Roman law is divided into two great phases. The first phase spans more than a thousand years, from the formation of the city-state of Rome to the codification of Justinian in the sixth century ad. Roman law was devised for a small, rural community that developed into a powerful city-state and it evolved as the law of a multinational empire that embraced a large part of the civilized world. During this long process the interaction between custom, enacted law and case law led to the formation of a highly sophisticated system gradually developed from layers of different elements. But the great bulk of Roman law, especially Roman private law, derived from jurisprudence rather than legislation. This unenacted law was not a confusing mass of shifting customs, but a steady tradition developed and transmitted by specialists who were initially members of the Roman priestly class and then secular jurists. In the final stages of this process when law-making was increasingly centralized, jurisprudence together with statutory law was compiled and codified. The codification of the law both completed the development of Roman law and evolved as the means whereby Roman law was subsequently transmitted to the modern world.