The Ancient Roman Law
Law studies nowadays have come to a point where the development of the legal precedents and doctrines is largely skipped. The reason is simple – the history of law matters no more to institutions teaching law simply because the new state of the legal profession requires no knowledge on the past. Nevertheless, the history of law remains a fascinating and truly inspirational area of research for many law experts and it is more than thrilling seeing how some of the modern law techniques have not even evolved a bit for centuries after their initial establishment.
The source that is used to develop the most advanced legal theories in Europe nowadays was initially developed in Ancient Rome. Almost all legal concepts we are familiar with (including the incorporation of both common and continental law systems) have their beginning in the social order that Romans invented centuries before the formation of any of the current European legal monsters like the UK, France and Germany.
The Romans were creating laws in almost the same way as the British are issuing acts of Parliament nowadays. The Roman council, a democratically formed body of decision-makers, was discussing the impact of any intended and proposed legislation with the emperor being able to revoke or accept the final draft of the law in question. Deciding various cases was also quite usual for law-makers in the Empire and the outcome of such legal decisions was recorded to produce a common law approach of a precedent – once decided in a certain way, a case would be a foundation of reasoning in any future similar disputes.
Even though the Roman law introduced legal concepts that are nowadays widely rejected (such as slavery), the Romans managed to introduce key features of the family law in matters such as divorce and marriage. Furthermore, the Romans were among the inventors of the law of mortgage – where huge landowners gave land to ordinary people and as a return they either expected a percentage of the production grown on the land or a monetary percentage of the income that the land generates.
And even though we will remember the Romans for creating pieces of art sometimes compared to the modern days designer jewellery, we should also bear in mind the fact that out Courts of justice and legal systems all exist as a development of what was once the most advanced civilization known to men – the Roman Empire.
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