Changes

The sources of our knowledge of Roman law in the ancient world include statutes, deeds and the written content left by legal scholars. Among these the Institutes of Gaius, an unfinished manuscript of lections, dated from the 2nd century AC, must be mentioned. Gaius invented a system of private law based on the division of all material into personae (persons), res (things) and actiones (legal actions). This system was used for many centuries that followed after. However, the most important source of information is the Corpus Juris Civilis, ordered by the emperor Justinian I. The emperor formed a commission of jurists to compile all existing Roman laws till date into one unified body.  Subsequently, by blending the old outdated laws with the new laws of the Roman empire, emperor Justinian I effectively cleansed and updated the Roman law thus selecting only those rules that had real practical value of the time leaving behind all obsolete principles and postulates. The first book of the so-called Corpus Juris Civilis is the Codex Constitutionum. It represents a selection of the imperial constitutions that had some practical value or their provisions were adapted to the circumstances of Justinian’s own time. The second book or a set of book volumes consists of 50 more book volumes that became known as Digest (Digesta) or Pandects (Pandectae). They contained a selection of the writings of the jurists and were pronounced to be a law book and no other jurist’s writings could be cited any more. At about the same time the Institutes of Justinian was published. It contained an outline of the elements of the Roman law. The last book is known as the New constitutions or the Novels and consists of ordinances issued by the emperor himself.