Laws
Corpus Iuris Civilis, 6th Century
Although Law as practiced in Rome had grown up as a type of case law, this was not the “Roman Law” known to the Medieval, or modern world. Now Roman law claims to be based on abstract principles of justice that were made into actual rules of law by legislative authority of the emperor or the Roman people. These ideas were transmitted to the Middle Ages in the great codification of Roman law carried throughout by the emperor Justinian (527-565).
The Corpus Iurus Civilis was issued in Latin in three parts, The Digest, the Institutes and a textbook. Currently in the World there are just three widespread legal systems: the “Common Law” of the Anglo-American legal tradition, Islamic Sharia, and Roman Law [in, for instance, most of Europe, Scotland, Quebec and Lousiana]. Each was spread by different sorts of imperialism in the past.
The Digest: Prologue
The Emperor Caesar, Flavius, Justinianus, Pious, Fortunate, Renowned, Conqueror, and Triumpher, Ever Augustus, to Tribonianus His Quaestor., Greeting:
With the aid of God governing Our Empire which was delivered to Us by His Celestial Majesty, We carry on war successfully. We adorn peace and maintain the Constitution of the State, and have such confidence in the protection of Almighty God that We do not depend upon Our arms, or upon Our soldiers, or upon those who conduct Our Wars, or upon Our own genius, but We solely, place Our reliance upon the providence of the Holy Trinity, from which are derived the elements of the entire world and their disposition throughout the globe.
Therefore, since there is nothing to be found in all things s worthy of attention as the authority of the law, which properly regulates all affairs both divine and human, and expels all injustice; We have found the entire arrangement of the law which has come down to us from the foundation of the City of Rome and the times of Romulus, to be so confused that it is extended to an infinite length and is not within the grasp of human capacity; and hence We were first induced to begin by examining what had been enacted b former most venerated princes, to correct their constitutions, and make them more easily understood; to the end that being included in a single Code, and having had removed all that is superfluous in resemblance and all iniquitous discord, they may afford to all men the ready assistance of true meaning.
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