Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

situation that might eventually arise. It is not even clear that lawmakers always do their best in this regard. Hence, someone must decide how the general law is to apply in specific cases. In the United States, this is primarily the job of the courts. While the Roman courts necessarily had some such role, the main work of interpretation was left to a group called “jurists.” The nature of this profession will be discussed at length in Chapter 5, but for now we can just think of them as somewhat similar to modern law professors. Roman courts had to apply the law in specific cases, but they did not publish decisions, as American courts can, so it was hard for a decision in one case to affect that in another. Jurists published their own interpreta tions of the laws (and of each other) both in general terms and in specific cases. Over time, these decisions came to shape the law a great deal (the full extent will be discussed in the last sec tion. By contrast, Roman courts did not explain their rulings either orally or in writing.) During the Imperial period, the emperors’ “responses” could offer authoritative interpretations of (and even amendments to) the law, but juristic activity con tinued to be important until the early third century ad. Even after juristic production slowed, the jurists’ body of written work continued to be influential (see Chapter 3 on the Digest ).

“The Edict”

One particular source of law among those just described was so important that it deserves its own section. Among the various

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