Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

settling disputes. Hence, lawyers were neither interested or interesting in these contexts. In the rest of this chapter I will speak of “crime(s)” for convenience, but keep in mind that I really mean “public-law offense,” and that this is something slightly different. Before discussing particular procedures and offenses, I will point out a few general principles of criminal liability. Most of these, as we saw in the last chapter, applied to delict as well. These rules were formalized later than the individual offenses (if at all), but they seem to have been generally observed even earlier. Committing a crime always involved an overt act. You could not be convicted for omission or for mere bad intentions. Intention, however, was important. Accidental and reckless action was not sufficient for a crime to have been committed; you had to have actual intent. So drunken brawlers were not to be treated as murderers, even if someone died in a fight. Finally, as long as someone committed the actual crime, other people could also be convicted if they were loosely attached. The standard phrase is “anyone by whose plan or effort” the crime was committed.

Republican Procedures

There were no separate criminal courts until quite late in Roman history; the first was created in 149 bc, and this only tried a single offense. Before this, major public offenses (e.g., treason, misuse of state funds) were tried before assemblies of

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