Questions: Roman Legal Codes and the Justice System

Question 1

The plebeians of the Roman Republic demanded that laws be written down and publicly displayed as the Twelve Tables. What does this demand most directly reveal about the function of law in early Rome?

• A. The Romans were a highly literate society that valued archiving official records
• B. Unwritten customary law was being interpreted by patrician magistrates in ways that served the elite, and written law constrained this discretion
• C. The Senate had formally required that all laws be inscribed and made public
• D. Plebeians wished to study law and needed access to texts for that purpose

Answer: (B)

The demand for written law was fundamentally political. Unwritten custom (mos maiorum) was interpreted exclusively by patrician magistrates, who could apply it selectively to favor the elite. Once laws were fixed in publicly visible text, magistrates could not simply invent rulings — the text constrained their discretion. This reveals that the struggle over legal codification was a struggle over power: legibility to the governed constrains the power of those who govern.

Question 2

The Roman concept of ius gentium (law of peoples) was significant for governing a multi-ethnic empire primarily because:

• A. It extended full Roman citizenship rights to all peoples of the empire
• B. It provided a legal framework applicable to non-citizens, enabling commerce and dispute resolution across ethnic boundaries
• C. It replaced ius civile and made all residents subject to identical legal treatment
• D. It abolished the legal distinction between slaves and free persons in commercial contexts

Answer: (B)

Ius civile applied only to Roman citizens, which created a problem as Rome expanded and millions of non-citizens needed legal recourse. Ius gentium — grounded in natural reason thought to be common to all peoples — provided a framework for adjudicating disputes involving non-citizens, particularly commercial and property cases. It was a pragmatic adaptation: not universal equality, but a workable legal mechanism for a diverse empire. Ius gentium never granted citizenship; it managed the legal needs of those who lacked it.

Question 3

Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis influenced modern legal systems primarily because it was studied in medieval European universities beginning in the 11th–12th centuries and used as the foundation for new civil law systems.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

When European universities revived systematic legal study in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Corpus Juris Civilis became their primary text. This transmission was the mechanism by which Roman concepts — res judicata, contract structure, legal personhood, the public/private law distinction — entered continental European, Latin American, and other legal traditions. The Corpus was not merely preserved as historical artifact; it was actively deployed as the basis for building new legal systems.

Question 4

The Roman philosophical concept of ius naturale (natural law applicable to most rational beings) meant that in practice, the Roman legal system applied equally to slaves, non-citizens, and women.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is the central tension in Roman legal history. The philosophical aspiration of ius naturale — a universal law grounded in reason, applicable to all rational beings — coexisted with a legal system that explicitly excluded slaves (no legal standing), restricted non-citizens, and barred women from most civic and legal roles. Universalist legal philosophy and systematic exclusion operated simultaneously. The gap between the theory and its application is not a minor detail; it is structurally important to understanding how legal systems can invoke universal principles while serving particular interests.

Question 5

Why did plebeians in the early Roman Republic demand that laws be written down in the Twelve Tables, and what does this demand reveal about the relationship between law and power?

Model answer: Before the Twelve Tables, Roman law existed as unwritten custom (mos maiorum) interpreted exclusively by patrician magistrates. With nothing written, magistrates could apply the law selectively — and did, in ways that consistently favored the elite. Plebeians had no textual basis from which to challenge a ruling. Demanding written, publicly posted law was demanding a constraint on patrician interpretive power: once law is fixed in text, the text can be appealed to, and deviation from it can be challenged. The Twelve Tables was less about legal sophistication than about legibility — making the rules visible and stable for those subject to them. This reveals that codification is always partly a political act: it fixes the terms of a power struggle at a particular moment.

This dynamic recurs throughout legal history. Written constitutions, bills of rights, and administrative codes serve the same function: they constrain the discretion of those who interpret and enforce law by creating a public standard to which they can be held. The Roman case is simply an early and unusually well-documented instance of this pattern.