The Sources of Roman Law

Abstract

The Romans called their own law ius civile: the legal order of the Roman citizenry (cives Romani). Like other peoples in antiquity, the Romans observed the principle of personality of law, according to which the law of a state applied only to its citizens. Thus the Roman ius civile was the law that applied exclusively to Roman citizens. However, Roman law underwent an important expansion in the course of time. With the gradual enlargement of the Roman city state and the increasing complexity of legal life, Roman jurisprudence adopted the idea of ius gentium: a body of legal institutions and principles common to all people subject to Roman rule regardless of their civitas. By the introduction of the ius gentium within the body of Roman law, the scope of the law was considerably enlarged. Nevertheless, technically the position remained that some legal institutions were open only to Roman citizens. Such institutions were classified as belonging to the ius civile, while other institutions were regarded as belonging to the ius gentium in the sense that they were applicable to citizens and non-citizens alike. After the extension of the Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire by the constitution of Emperor Caracalla in ad 212, this technical distinction in effect vanished: in principle every free man within the empire was now a citizen, subject to the same law.