Public Law: Writings and Doctrine

The Romans did not theorize on their constitution, and there is no such thing as a developed constitutional law, let alone doctrine about it.

So far as administration is concerned, in due course a body of substantive law on public law came into being, and jurists at the end of the second century wrote treatises about it. Papirius Iustus collected imperial rulings in his De constitutionibus; Callistratus wrote his De iurefisci (‘On fiscal law’); Paul collected imperial decisions in his Sententiae; while Ulpian wrote De officio proconsulis (‘On the office of a proconsul’), Hermogenian an Epitome, a compendium of public law, and Arcadius Charisius De muneribus civilibus (‘On public obligations’). On criminal law there were specialized works such as Papinian’s De adulteriis, Marcian’s De publicis iudiciis, and Modestinus’ De poenis. There is even Macer’s De re militari. The great commentaries of Ulpian and Paul on the edict also dealt with public law. As for the law of procedure, cognitio extraordinariasize=2 face=Arial> - the mode of procedure which gradually came to dominate - was basically the same for private, public, and criminal law. Some treatises were written about it too, such as Callistratus’ De cognitionibus (‘On litigation’), or Ulpian’s De appellationibus (‘On appeals’). These treatises mainly describe the law and cite imperial decisions which had a general purport, but they also discuss doctrinal questions and systematize the law. Much legislation on administrative law, extending to criminal law, imperial administration, taxation, and local administration, was collected in the three earlier Codes (Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian) and later in Justinian’s Code. Extracts from the kinds of treatises just mentioned were included in the Digest. This legislation was certainly founded on a system, but from the piecemeal references that remain it is often not easy to discern it.

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Source: Johnson David (ed). The Cambridge companion to Roman Law. Cambridge University Press,2015. — 554 p.. 2015

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