Chapter Summary
The earliest Roman law we have reasonably reliable knowledge of is the Twelve Tables, compiled in the mid-fifth century BC by a special commission charged with that task. Other than that, while legislation (of the citizen assemblies) was a valid source of private law (and in theory the only source of new law in the Republican constitution), there were few statutes of major significance in private law.
In the Republic, the major source of legal development was not formal legislation, but rather innovations by the urban praetor. The praetor used his control over litigation to develop the law by introducing new remedies or qualifying existing ones. Law developed in this way was called the ius honorarium, by contrast with the ius civile (civil law).During the Empire, the ius honorarium became less important as power became centralised in the emperor's hands. Initially acting through existing institutions, especially the Senate (whose resolutions became formally binding in this period), and then legislating directly through imperial pronouncements, the emperor became the major source of legal development in the Empire.
Underlying both the ius honorarium and imperial pronouncements, however, was the work of the jurists. It was these men who developed the law into a sophisticated system, and whose ideas were the major source of the developments embodied in the ius honorarium and the pronouncements of the emperors.
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