Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Writing and the Law

law. Writing was clearly a normal part of fixing the law, and probably at some point became a necessary one. On the other hand, there was no general provision for the use of writing to publicize the contents of those laws.

Documents and Sayings

The role of documents in individual cases is a more complicated matter, but in general we can say that it was less important than in the making of laws. In some respects, legal proceedings were expected to be oral, in others written, and yet in other ways the issue is more complex. In this section we will look at the use of “legal documents” (in a narrow sense) and the use of oral “sayings” in their place. By the former, I mean the kind of documents produced specifically because the law required them as part of some larger legal process. A written will would be an example of this in both common and Roman law. I will use the term “saying” to mean some set of words with a simi lar function, but uttered aloud. Oaths are typically sayings of this sort in either system (noted, in written form, in [9, 12] ). In the next section, we will look at documents and sayings in a broader sense – that is, the way the legal system used written or oral expressions that had not been created originally, or at least not exclusively, for the purposes of the law. The most general feature of trials that emphasizes orality is the restriction of the deaf from pleading in court. (This is a procedural issue, not a substantive one; all their legal rights

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