At the start of the Common Era (CE), Roman laws were mostly unwritten. Then the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) collected and edited all of Rome's laws and posted them in an official announcement called the Perpetual Edict. The formalizing of Roman law into the Perpetual Edict made the legal code binding, or valid, in every Roman court.
Nearly four hundred years later, Justinian I became the emperor of Byzantium, the Christian kingdom to the east of Rome that was the capital of the Roman Empire for a while. Justinian I ruled from 527 to 565 CE. Under his leadership, the most famous set of laws in Western antiquity was created. It was called the Corpus Juris Civilis--Latin for the Body of Civil Law. The Corpus Juris Civilis is more commonly known as Justinian's Code.
Justinian's Code was not a new set of laws. It simply continued Hadrian’s efforts to collect all of the laws of the Roman Empire into one document. However, Justinian's Code did introduce some new legal concepts, including the value of the rights of the individual, and the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty. Justinian's Code formalized and confirmed the Romans' belief that it was the government's responsibility to keep private property secure and to punish people who stole or damaged someone's property.
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The Earth receiving from the emperors Hadrian and Justinian the codex of Roman law as dictated by Nature, Justice and Wisdom. |
Justinian's Code had three main sections, described in the table below.
| The Codex | a list of all acts and edits by Roman emperors and other rulers, from the start of Rome's history |
| The Digest of Pandects | an encyclopedia of brief explanations from Roman jurists--people who gave and explained rulings |
| The Institutes | a textbook that introduced the Code to students of law |
All three parts of Justinian's Code were enforced as law. Furthermore, referencing past laws outside of those included in the Code was forbidden in court. Of course, some events and situations occurred which were not covered by the Code, so Justinian later added a fourth section, called Novellae Constitutiones (Latin for new laws).
Justinian's Code included public laws (laws for the government), private laws (laws for individuals), natural laws (laws about all natural things including animals and God), laws of nations (laws pertaining to all mankind), and civil laws (laws made by the people for the state). These laws all worked together to create the Roman legal system.
Question
How does Justinian's Code compare to the Code of Hammurabi?
