Introduction.
ccix
ultimately produce confusion and contradiction.
but whatever the
fniendae causa reges olim constituti sunt;
form to
of
government may
know what
Justitiae
be, the desire to
have
the State considers justice,
is
justice,
and
essential to
civilisation.
The code result of a of
Twelve Tables
of laws of the
commission
Kome was
at
the
to Athens, at least in respect of ten
Mommsen
them, and the work, as
says,
was a
political
compromise between the popular and the aristocratic Livy tells us that the laws of the Twelve Tables parties. formed the foundation
own
of all the
heap
of the
description
Koman
of laws
law, but Livy's
accumulated one
"
shows what must have been in his time the confusion, and therein the uncertainty, of the law.
upon the other
When
one considers the power
of every praetor in turn hav-
ing jurisdiction to dictate by published rules what rules of justice
he would observe during his tenure
of office,
that these were not binding on his successor,
wonderful that the
such men
Koman law
required
is
it
and not
the labours of
as Gains, Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, Modestinus,
make it intelligible or fit for practical life. Lawyers who advised and judges who decided had a resource which a modern digestor or compiler does not and Tribonian,
possess
to
the sovereign power of the Emperor, which could
enact that an opinion should become the law, rendered the task of the law reformer a very different one from is
in our
The stating
own
what
it
day.
alteration of existing law
what the law
is
and the process
of
merely
are two very different functions,
and the confusion between the two has marred many an effort to get a clear
and
intelligible code.
once said in the House of first
Commons
get a comprehensive account of
you commence
amending
it
Mr. Gladstone
that
you should
what the law
and
a
great
is
before
many
law^
