The Law of the Twelve Tables

Text 2

Law of the Roman Republic and Empire.

Text 1

Supplementary Reading

Part II

Notes

1. administrative – норма административного права

2. null and void – ничтожный и не имеющий юридической силы

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Roman law has influenced the development of law in most of Western civilization. It dealt with matters of inheritance, obligations (including contracts), property (including slaves), and persons. Most laws were passed by assemblies dominated by the patrician families, though the rulings of magistrates were also important. Later emperors bypassed these forms and issued their own decrees. The interpretations of jurists also came to have the weight of law. Though various attempts were made to gather and simplify existing laws (beginning with the Law of the Twelve Tables), by far the most successful effort was that of the Emperor Justinian (in ad 528), whose code superseded all previous laws and formed the Roman Empire's legal legacy. Roman legal procedure is the basis for modern procedure in civil-law countries. In the early Republic, the plaintiff was required to call the defendant to court or to bring him by force. A magistrate then decided whether the case should go before a judge, or prominent layman. The judge heard arguments from advocates and questioned witnesses; he made a decision but had no power to execute it. In the later Republic, much greater power was placed in the hands of the magistrates and courts: the summons was issued by the court, the trial was held only before a magistrate, and the court became responsible for the execution of the sentence.

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Twelve Tables is the early code of Roman law. Most modern authorities accept the traditional date of 450 B.C. The tables were supposedly written in response to the plebeians' protest that the patrician judges were able to discriminate against them with impunity because the principles governing legal disputes were known only orally. Two decemvirs [10-man commissions] were appointed to state the law in writing, and they first produced 10 tablets, probably wooden, with laws inscribed thereon; in the next year they produced two more. Exact quotations of the Twelve Tables are rare, but from references in later Latin writings their content has been approximately reconstructed. They appear to have been an exceedingly formalistic statement of the customary law. In later times the Twelve Tables were regarded with reverence as a prime legal source.

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