from the king; and apart from the rulings of the pontifical college, which did not require the sanction of the people, this theory of primitive legislation seems to be correct; for the very early laws passed by the comitia on the downfall of the monarchy do not appear to mark any violent break in the theory of the constitution. We do not know whether the king employed the formula afterwards used by the Republican magistrates, which elicited the "will and command" of the burgesses (velitis, jubeatis, quirites); but law (lex) is from the first something "laid down" by a competent authority, and binding, therefore, in virtue of the power that ordains it.[1] After its ordinance it may or must create a contractual relation between individuals,[2] but there is no hint of its being the result of a contract or co-operation between independent authorities. The source of law is, therefore, simple; it is the people's will; but, through the bar to utterance created by the magistracy, this will is very limited in its capacity for expression. The people are also affirmed to have been in a certain sense the source of honour, and typical illustrations of this power are presented by the traditional beliefs that the regal insignia of Etruria, adopted by the kings of Rome, were only assumed by them with the consent of Senate and people,[3] and that the appointment of officers for special purposes, although these may have been in theory merely delegates of the king, had to be ratified by laws of the curiae. The quaestors, the earliest prototypes of the later magistrates at Rome, are said to have been so appointed.[4]
The people, therefore, possessed certain sovereign rights, but each right was limited by the vast authority of their personal representative, who wielded the whole of the executive, and so much of the legislative power as is implied in the sole right of initiative. We cannot even speak of the people as vesting this power in their king; for their right of election was, as we shall see, probably as limited as their power of legislation.with [Greek: tithêmi].]
- ↑ Lex is probably connected etymologically with the German legen (Gothic lagjan) as [Greek: thesmos
- ↑ In business we have leges locationis, venditionis, in the structure of corporations a lex collegii. On the other hand, in the legum dictio of augury, which is the statement of the mode of the answer of the gods to a request, in the lex data given to individuals by a magistrate (e.g. the leges censoriae) or granted by Rome as a charter to a subject state, there seems to be the idea of a purely one-sided ordinance.
- ↑ Dionys. iii. 62; Cic. de Rep. ii. 17, 31.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. xi. 22; Ulp. in Dig. i. 13.
