ROMAN LAW
Roman law.The legal system of the ancient Romans, forming the basis of the modern civil
law; CIVIL LAW(1).
“The Roman law is the body of rules that governed the social relations of many peoples in
Europe, Asia, and Africa for some period between the earliest prehistoric times and 1453 A.D.
This date should perhaps be extended to 1900 A.D., or even to the present time, and we might
include America in the territory concerned…. Yet the essential fact is that no present-day
community … consciously applies as binding upon its citizens the rules of Roman law in their
unmodified form. That law is an historical fact. It would have only a tepid historical interest … if it
were not for the circumstance that, before it became a purely historical fact, it was worked into the
foundation and framework of what is called the civil law ….” Max Radin, Handbook of Roman
Law 1 (1927).
“Roman law is not only the best-known, the most highly developed, and the most influential
of all legal systems of the past; apart from English law, it is also the only one whose entire and
unbroken history can be traced from early and primitive beginnings to a stage of elaborate
perfection in the hands of skilled specialists.” Hans Julius Wolff, Roman Law: An Historical
Introduction 5 (1951). [Blacks Law 8th]