The Significance of Roman Law in the History of International Law

Abstract

Roman law, as generally conceived by the legal community, is private law-the law concerned essentially with property, contracts and family relations.Justinian's Corpus Juris (533-534 A. D.) contains in the Code, it is true, a good deal of Roman public law, and because of its exaltation of imperial power, this segment of Roman law supplied authority and juridical tools to the rising absolutism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; but otherwise the significance of Roman public law is virtually confined to the political and legal history of the ancient Roman Empire.With international relations the Corpus Juris itself has practically nothing to do.An exception is the recognition of the sanctity (not the "extraterritoriality") of envoys; to beat them was declared a violation of the law (jus gentium) '--an acknowledgment that the rule was by no means specifically Roman.On the other hand the Corpus Juris and especially its main part, the Digest, does not much discriminate against non-Romans-a liberal attitude unknown to other ancient nations including the Greeks, 2 and unknown even to the Middle Ages. LEGAL ELEMENTS IN ROMAN FOREIGN AFFAIRSOutside the Corpus Juris, we have knowledge, through legal and historical sources, of rules of ancient Rome's municipal law touching international relations-so-called "external" municipal law.The law of booty in war is an instance.'Such booty was to be delivered to the * The subject of the present article has not yet been made the basis of any special study as far as the writer knows.HRABAR, THE ROMAN LAW IN THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL DOCTRINE (Dorpat 1901, in Russian) is exclusively concerned with private international law; see the summary in REVUE DE DROIT INTER- NATIONAL ET DE LPGISLATION COMPAReE 1902, 458.In the early history of private international law the permanent influence of Roman legal doctrine is quite obvious, but with this matter we are not concerned here.Nor does the thoughtful study by