Historically, Romans were the most legally minded people in the world. Development of their law can be assumed to be the greatest achievement Rome made in history. The Roman law developed was to serve the needs of the Empire. Notably, the earliest law was religious called fas which were used by priests and pontiffs to advise the king who then acted as judge. The laws were first written on twelve tables for jus which was the king's judgment. They made and used by Roman magistrates especially the praetors to who used the twelve tables to decide cases. However, the law on the twelve tablets was not enough to make all judgments and praetors were using their opinion to making ruling where there was no law stating the judgment for the offense (Hoeflich, 1982). They were later supposed to issue an edict stating the principles to use in judgment. By this way, they developed a body of law that could rule on customs and traditions.
The common law or the jus civile was the largest body of Roman law. It first applied to Romans only. When the Roman rule extended to the Mediterranean, there were conflicts between Romans and foreigners leading to the formation of jus gentium in order to make a fair ruling. As the law became more complex, law schools started coming up training lawyers the technicalities of their profession. Lawyer's role then was to advise the emperor (Hoeflich, 1982). Later Emperor Justinian issued the law codes called the civil law or the Juris Civilis and passed them to the other nations.
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Notably, the law was made on the notion of Right of people and Justice. It is from these Roman laws that the rest of the world learned that people should be judged with justice and in consideration of people's rights. The rest of the world also copied the laws and they started making their ruling based on the law (Yntema, 1949). Today, every state in the world has a constitution that governs the land. It is from the Roman law that other nations have developed their constitutions.
References
Hoeflich, M. H. (1982). A seventeenth century Roman Law bibliography: Jacques Godefroy and his Bibliotheca Juris Civilis Romani. Law Libr. J., 75, 514.
Yntema, H. E. (1949). Roman law and its influence on Western civilization. Cornell LQ, 35, 77.
