Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

the property when one or the other died? The Roman law rules discussed earlier (Chapters 15 and 16) did not apply. Rather, the Romans left this up to Greek and Jewish law, respectively, to decide. (If there was no nearby court to decide these issues con veniently, that was not the Romans’ problem.) Of course, there were exceptions to this principle, and these will be discussed later, but it is important to begin with one clarification. Limited jurisdiction is a legal concept, not a political one. If you are not subject to the local laws, this does not give you freedom; it means you are not protected by the laws. In particular, the local authorities can punish you in any way they see fit on any (or even no) grounds. There are a few known instances in which Roman authorities used that power in situations that created diplomatic problems. For instance, in the late second century bc, a Roman consul had the mayor of an Italian town beaten because the city baths had not been prepared quickly enough for the consul’s wife. Even here, Rome was the final arbiter of its own convenience. The Italian had no legal recourse; at best, the Romans might be convinced that their fellow citizen’s cru elty had made him a political liability. However, breakdowns in the theoretical distinctions of the personality principle were both early and sometimes signifi cant. While the statute law technically applied only to the citi zens, the praetor could grant judgment in whatever other cases and to whomever he wished. Thus the creations of the Edict (say, the consensual contracts) were available to all. Moreover, a similar mechanism could extend much of the statute law to noncitizens; the praetor instructed judges to decide cases “as

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