Editing Roman law (section)

== Substance ==
[[File:Wie die Römer Recht gesprochen haben(CC BY 4.0).webm|thumb|The basics of Roman law (in German with English captioning)]]
=== Concept of laws ===
The 2nd-century Roman [[jurist]] [[Ulpian]], however, divided law into three branches: natural law, which existed in nature and governed animals as well as humans; the law of nations, which was distinctively human; and, civil law, which was the body of laws specific to a people.<ref>''Digest'' 1.1.1.4; Tierney, ''The Idea of Natural Rights'', p. 136.</ref>

''[[Civil law (legal system)|Ius civile]]'' ("citizen law", originally ius civile Quiritium) was the body of common laws that applied to Roman citizens and the [[Praetor#Praetor urbanus|''Praetores Urbani'']], the individuals who had jurisdiction over cases involving citizens. ''[[Ius gentium]]'' ("law of peoples") was the body of common laws that applied to foreigners, and their dealings with Roman citizens. The [[Praetor#Praetor peregrinus|''Praetores Peregrini'']] were the individuals who had jurisdiction over cases involving citizens and foreigners. ''[[Ius naturale]]'' ("natural law") was the concept that all persons had a kind of common sense, which the jurists developed to explain why all people seemed to obey some laws.{{Cn|date=January 2025}}

''[[Ius scriptum]]'' ("written law") was the body of statute laws made by the legislature, known as ''leges'' ({{lit|laws}}) and ''plebiscita'' ({{lit|plebiscites}}, originating in the [[Plebeian Council]]). Roman lawyers would also include in the ''ius scriptum'' the edicts of magistrates (''magistratuum edicta''), the advice of the Senate ({{lang|la|Senatus consulta}}), the responses and thoughts of jurists (''[[responsa]] prudentium''), and the proclamations and beliefs of the emperor (''principum placita''). ''[[Ius non scriptum]]'' ("unwritten law") was the body of common laws that arose from customary practice and had become binding over time.{{Cn|date=January 2025}}

''[[Ius singulare]]'' ("singular law") was the special law for certain groups of people, things, or legal relations, as exceptional from the general rules of the legal system. For example, the ius singulare about wills written by people in the military during a campaign exempted them from the solemnities generally required for citizens when writing wills in normal circumstances. {{lang|la|[[Ius commune]]}} ("common law") was the general, ordinary, law, as distinct from ''ius singulare''.{{Cn|date=January 2025}} 

''[[Ius publicum]]'' ("public law") was the law that protected the interests of the Roman state. Roman criminal law was mostly private, with only the most severe crimes prosecuted by the state. ''Ius publicum'' was also used to describe obligatory legal regulations (today called ''[[Peremptory norm|ius cogens]]''). ''[[Ius privatum]]'' ("private law") was the law that protected individuals, which included personal, property, civil and criminal law as well as the procedural law of judicial proceedings (''iudicium privatum'').{{Cn|date=January 2025}} 

=== Public law ===
{{See also|Res publica}}[[File:Cicero Denounces Catiline in the Roman Senate by Cesare Maccari.png|thumb|right|[[Cicero]], author of the classic book ''The Laws,'' attacks [[Catiline]] for attempting a coup in the [[Roman Senate]].]]
The [[Constitution of the Roman Republic|Roman Republic's constitution]] or ''[[mos maiorum]]'' ("custom of the ancestors") was an unwritten, informal, and unofficial set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent,  constantly evolving throughout the life of the Republic.{{Cn|date=January 2025}}

Throughout the 1st century BC, the power and legitimacy of the Roman constitution progressively eroded. Even Roman constitutionalists, such as the senator [[Cicero]], lost a willingness to remain faithful to it towards the end of the Republic. When the [[Roman Republic]] ultimately [[Augustus#First settlement|fell]] in the years following the [[Battle of Actium]] and [[Mark Antony]]'s suicide, what was left of the Roman constitution died along with the Republic. The first [[Roman emperor]], [[Augustus]], attempted to manufacture the appearance of a constitution that still governed the Empire, by utilising that constitution's institutions to lend legitimacy to the [[Principate]], e.g., reusing prior grants of greater ''[[imperium]]'' to substantiate Augustus' greater ''imperium'' over the [[imperial province]]s and the prorogation of different magistracies to justify Augustus' receipt of tribunician power. The belief in a surviving constitution lasted well into the life of the [[Roman Empire]].{{Cn|date=January 2025}}

Concepts that originated in the Roman constitution live on in constitutions to this day. Examples include [[Separation of powers#Checks_and_balances|checks and balances]], [[separation of powers|the separation of powers]], [[veto]]es, [[filibuster]]s, [[quorum]] requirements, [[term limits]], [[impeachment]]s, [[power of the purse|the powers of the purse]], and regularly scheduled [[elections]]. Even some lesser used modern constitutional concepts, such as the block voting found in the [[United States Electoral College|electoral college of the United States]], originate from ideas found in the Roman constitution.{{Cn|date=January 2025}}

=== Private law ===
''[[Stipulatio]]'' was the basic form of [[contract]] in Roman law. It was made in the format of question and answer. The precise nature of the contract is disputed.{{Cn|date=January 2025}}

''[[Rei vindicatio]]'' is a legal action by which the [[plaintiff]] demands that the [[defendant]] return a thing that belongs to the plaintiff. It was only used when the plaintiff owns the thing, and the defendant somehow impeded the plaintiff's possession of the thing. The plaintiff could also institute an ''[[Furtum|actio furti]]'', a personal [[Cause of action|action]], to punish the defendant. If the thing could not be recovered, the plaintiff could also claim damages from the defendant with the aid of the ''condictio furtiva'', another personal action. With the aid of the ''actio legis Aquiliae'', another personal action, the plaintiff could claim damages from the defendant. ''Rei vindicatio'' was derived from the ''[[roman law#Ius Civile, Ius Gentium, and Ius Naturale|ius civile]]'', and was only available to Roman citizens.{{Cn|date=January 2025}}

=== Status ===
{{Main|Status in Roman legal system}}
A person's abilities and duties within the Roman legal system depended on their legal ''status''. The individual could have been a Roman citizen (''status civitatis''), unlike a foreigner; been free (''status libertatis''), unlike slaves; or had a certain position in a Roman family (''status familiae'') either as the head of the family (''[[pater familias]]'') or some lower member (''alieni iuris'' "one who lives under someone else's law").{{cn|date=February 2023}}

=== Litigation ===
{{Main|Roman litigation}}
The history of Roman Law can be divided into three systems of procedure: ''legis actiones'', the ''formulary system'', and ''cognitio extra ordinem''. The periods in which these systems were in use overlapped and did not have definitive breaks. Roughly, ''legis actio'' system prevailed from the time of the XII Tables (c. 450 BC) until about the end of the 2nd century BC; the formulary procedure was primarily used from the last century of the Republic until the end of the classical period (c. AD 200); and ''cognitio extra ordinem'' was used in post-classical times.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jolowicz |first1=Herbert Felix |first2=Barry |last2=Nicholas |author2-link=Barry Nicholas |title=Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law. |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1967 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nwg9AAAAIAAJ |pages=528 |isbn=9780521082532}}</ref>

During the republic and until the bureaucratization of Roman judicial procedure, the judge was usually a private person (''[[Privatus#Iudex privatus|iudex privatus]]''). He had to be a Roman male citizen. The parties could agree on a judge, or they could appoint one from a list of judges known as the ''album iudicum''. They went down the list until they found a judge agreeable to both parties, or if none could be found they had to take the last one on the list.

No one had a legal obligation to judge a case. Judges had great latitude in the way they conducted litigation. He considered all the evidence and ruled in the way that seemed just. Because the judge was not a jurist or a legal technician, he often consulted a jurist about the technical aspects of the case, but he was not bound by the jurist's reply. At the end of the litigation, if things were not clear to him, he could refuse to give a judgment, by swearing that it wasn't clear. Also, there was a maximum time to issue a judgment, which depended on some technical issues of law.

Later on, with the bureaucratization, this procedure disappeared, and was substituted by the so-called ''extra ordinem'' procedure, also known as the cognitory system. The whole case was reviewed before a magistrate in a single phase. The magistrate had obligation to judge and to issue a decision, and the decision could be appealed to a higher magistrate.