Justinian’s Code and Roman Law: A Historical Overview
Justinian and His Legislative Work
The Corpus Iuris Civilis is absolutely one of the crowning works of the human spirit. At the time of Justinian’s rise to power, the central idea was to restore the ancient unity and greatness of the empire through arms, religion, and law. To conduct a legal compilation completed in such a short space of time, he had a man named Tribonian. The collection consists of a code of laws and an institutional manual.
- Volume I contains the Institutions
- Volume II contains the Justinianus Codex
- Volume III contains the Novelae
The last complete Spanish translation of the Corpus Iuris is the Garcia del Corral, Roman. Justinian’s body of civil law forbade comments and interpretations of their compilation and allowed only literal translations into Greek.
The First Edition of the Codex
On February 13, 528, Justinian ordered, for practical purposes, the compilation of a code of laws to the codes used in Gregorian, Theodosian, Hermogeniano, and posterior. The law commissioners were to dispose of repealed constitutions, eliminate useless texts, and reduce them. The Codex was published on April 7, 529, through the constitution Summa Rei Publicae. In 534, a new edition would be issued.
Justinian’s Digest
Justinian published a series of constitutions in 530 called Quinquaginta Decisiones. Justinian speaks only of decisions, not constitutions. On December 15, 530, Justinian promulgated the constitution Deo Auctore, entrusting the collection of the commission was right jurisprudential. In concrete, in an anthology of jurisprudence writings, divided into 50 books and sorted according to the scheme recently published the Edict perpetual Codex, with none of the lawyers having preference or priority over others. It should indicate the name of the lawyer, the work, and the book from which he took each piece, avoid duplication, eliminate inconsistencies, and remove blemishes with the final title of Digest or Pandectae. Tribonian chose as partners the following: Constantine and eleven lawyers. On December 16, 533, Justinian published the Digest, which came into force on the 30th of the month. It was then banned from use in both teaching practice and in previous editions of the writings and case law. They could only attend to the same version that appeared in the Digest. The fragments collected came from works of 39 different lawyers. The Digest was divided into 50 books, and these, in turn, into instruments. Then, using the magic number seven, Justinian divided the Digest into 7 parts. The jurisprudential texts collected in the Digest were altered by Justinian’s compilers. We call these changes, strictly, interpolations. Sometimes the change is imposed by the need to adapt the cognitorio system to a solution related to the procedure. Another form, a subsequent series of manuscripts, are called the Vulgate (after the eleventh century) and are due to the revival of legal studies at the University of Bologna. All derive from the Florentine.
The Vatican fragments, so-called because they were discovered in a palimpsest of the Vatican Library, are an extensive collection by an unknown lawyer. It was divided by subject into parts in which fragments coupled Papiniano, Paul, and Ulpian constitutional texts, mostly rescripts.
Appointments Act
The issue of the application in court to the right contained in the classic legal literature (iura) was soon raised. To mitigate such an uncertain situation, some constitutions were enacted to regulate the use of jurisprudential texts. In the year 321, Emperor Constantine banned the argument of the critical remarks to queastiones and responsibilities of Papiniano made by Ulpian and Paul. Six years later, he expressly held the authority of the work of Paulo. The most important of these laws is one of 426 that is generally known as the Law of Citations. The work of classical proportions had five favorites in this period of decay: Papiniano, Paul, Ulpian, Modestito, and Gayo. The Dating Loi confirmed the reduction of custom and established that the only lawyers that could be argued in court to support a claim were the five already mentioned. In case of disagreement on an issue, the majority view prevailed, and if there was a tie, Papiniano took precedence. This solution adopted by law was extended to the East to be collected by Theodosius II in the 438 code. He also added that not only could those five lawyers be relied on in trial, but also those others whenever his authority was recognized by one of the top five.
Theodosian Code
The first official compilation of the leges was the Codex Theodosianus. In 429, Theodosius II appointed a commission of nine persons of high rank with a dual mission: collect codes like the Gregorian Hermogeniano general constitutions enacted since Constantine ordered books and written titles, and case law should establish a mighty work which contains all the applicable laws. A compilation of leges and iura. That compilation failed the imperial order or even the first part of it. Theodosius II felt the urge to have a collection of leges for practical use. By the year 435, he appointed a new committee of 16 members, almost double the first, in order to compile general constitutions of Constantine and successors until Theodosius II himself, allowing the commissioners to amend the text to avoid contradictions. The new job was done quickly, and the Theodosian Code was published on February 15, 438, and entered into force on the first day of the year 439. This was divided into 16 books, and these, in turn, into titles, in which the constitutions are collected in chronological order. Only four and a half books were engaged in private law (the second part of the fifth and eighth).
Subsequent Legal Developments in the West and East
West
After 439, the legislation of the legal history of West and East can be considered as separate. The Western legal samples after 440 are typical of the deep social popularization culture of the time.
East
Since the beginning of the 5th century, there was a revival of classical legal culture. This is due to teachers in law schools. The most important was that of Berito (425), considered the mother of Roman law, and their teachers as teachers of universal teachers. The eastern activity was not creative; its main merit was to discuss and make available their own way of classical jurisprudential texts. They taught and wrote in Greek but had no jurisprudential texts undergo major changes except for the wealthy background of the new imperial law. Without the classic tradition maintained by teachers in schools of Berito and Constantinople, Justinian’s compilation would have been impossible.