College Of Pennsylvania Carey Law Faculty
Roman law within the days of the Roman Republic and Empire was closely procedural, and lacked a professional legal class. Decisions were not published in any systematic means, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised. Each case was to be determined afresh from the legal guidelines of the State, which mirrors the unimportance of judges’ selections for future cases in civil law techniques today. From 529 to 534 AD the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I codified and consolidated Roman law up till that time, in order that what remained was one-twentieth of the mass of authorized texts from before. As one legal historian wrote, “Justinian consciously seemed back to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to restore it to the height it had reached three centuries earlier than.” The Justinian Code remained in force in the East till the …
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