Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

very brief description of the different jurisdictions here. The civil courts handled not only most of the matters that their American and British counterparts do – like contracts, prop erty damage, and inheritance – but also most forms of theft and most crimes of violence. Thus the rules given in this chapter have a particularly broad relevance.

Formulary Procedure

This way of arranging cases gets its name from the formula , an instruction given to the judge(s) hearing the case on how they should go about deciding it. The origins of the procedure are unclear. It arose perhaps around 150 bc, and may or may not have been introduced all at once. Formulary trials fell into two quite distinct phases. The first of these (called in iure , “at law”) was a kind of preliminary hearing in which the par ties consulted with an elected magistrate to set up the ground rules for a hearing on their specific problem [3] . Then came the trial proper, called the apud iudicem (“before a judge”) phase. Here there were arguments and the presentation of evidence and witnesses. At the end, the judge (in some cases a panel of judges) delivered a verdict. The official in charge of the first, in iure phase was ordi narily the urban praetor. This office was part of the standard ladder that ambitious politicians had to climb if they wanted to reach the highest positions (Chapter 2). Thus any given prae tor would always have been an aristocrat and a politician, but

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