ROMAN LAW. The term "Roman law" is one of some what indefinite meaning. It denotes first of all the law of the city of Rome and of the Roman empire. This in itself is an enormously wide subject, for it includes, in the west, the law in force at any period from the foundation of the city (traditional date 753 B.c.) until the fall of the Western empire in the 5th century A.D., and in the east, can be taken to include the law of the Eastern empire, until it too fell with the capture of Con stantinople by the Turks in ; for the law even of the later Eastern empire remained, in spite of changes, more Roman in character than most other branches of its civilization.
But "Roman law" does not mean merely the law of those political societies to which the name Roman may in some sense be applied, for the legal institutions evolved by the Romans have had, not merely influence on those of other peoples, but in many cases actual application, in times long after the disappearance of the Roman empire as a political entity, and even in countries which were never subject to Roman rule. Thus, to take the most striking example, in a large part of Germany until the adoption of a common code for the whole empire in 1900, the Roman law was in force as "subsidiary law," i.e., it was applied unless ex cluded by contrary local provisions. This law, however, which was in force in parts of Europe long after the fall of the Roman empire, was not the Roman law in its original form. Its basis was indeed always the Corpus iuris civilis, i.e., the codifying legislation of the Emperor Justinian (A.D. 527-565, see below), but from the eleventh century onwards (see GLOSS ; IRNERIUS, ACCUR SIUS) this legislation was interpreted, developed and adapted to later conditions by generations of jurists, and necessarily received additions from non-Roman sources. All the forms which it as sumed in different countries and at different epochs can also claim to be included under the title "Roman The importance of Roman law is, however, not confined to the actual application of its rules as such either in the Roman empire or elsewhere, for its influence on the development of law in general has been immense. Even to-day, if we look at the legal systems of peoples with a Western civilization, we can say that they fall (with some exceptions, especially the Scandinavian countries) into two groups—an English group, and a group in which the main elements are of Roman origin. To the English
group belong England, nearly all the United States of America, and most of the British dominions and colonies; to the Roman group belong the rest. The nations of the Continent are, nearly all of them, living to-day under Codes which, though they contain much that is not Roman, are Roman in their structure, their fundamental categories and their general method of thought. Within the British empire there is Scotland with a system funda mentally Roman, Quebec with its French law, built largely with Roman materials, and South Africa which, like Ceylon, has a system known as "Roman-Dutch," that is to say based on the Roman law as developed by the jurists of the Netherlands. Even English law itself, though owing less to Roman law than any other system, has at different times and in different ways received con siderable accessions from Roman sources. (See ENGLISH LAW ; and e.g., Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law I. 88 seq., 'The term "civil law" is frequently used, in England at least, to denote the Roman system in this sense, as opposed to the native "common law." Holdsworth History of English Law II. 145-149, 176-178 IV. 228 seq.) These developments however lie outside the scope of the article which is confined to the history of private law within the empire up to the death of Justinian.