Roman law in France, Germany, and Great Britain

France. Italy and southern France were the areas most continuously influenced by Roman law because they had been governed by the Romans themselves and by Germanic versions of Roman law codes. These were also areas where universities developed early, as did Renaissance humanism. Southern France had adopted Roman law and was known as the land of the written law (pays de droit écrit), while the northern two-thirds of France was subject to diverse local customary laws (pays de droit coutumier). This caused some tension, and French legal humanists tried to resolve some of the problems by carefully applying Roman law. French kings continually tried to increase the uniformity of the country's laws in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Roman law sometimes provided the source of these common laws, but so did the Custom of Paris, which was often seen as a more appropriate source for France. Partly under influence of the "written reason" of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the French tried to codify their customs, frequently using the organization of Roman law as a model for the structure, if not for the laws themselves. This is particularly notable in Antoine Loisel's Institutes Coutumieres (1607) and Étienne Pasquier's L'interprétation des institutes de Justinian (1609).

Germany. In Germany, the reception of Roman law began around 1500, when the ius commune was given precedence over local customs in the imperial supreme court. Use of Roman law in this form was particularly attractive in the Holy Roman Empire, because there were over three hundred independent local jurisdictions, some quite backward administratively. Roman law provided a model for them and also created some form of unity in the fragmented empire.

Great Britain. Scotland had introduced Roman law indirectly in the form of ius commune, because it was distinct from English common law, and the Scots wished to establish their independence from English control. English common law developed independently from Roman law, but some courts in England, the Equity and Admiralty Courts, for example, were influenced by Roman law, at least in the form of the ius commune or through canon law, which church courts continued to use in England even after the Reformation.

The Wider Influence of Roman law

The growth of the influence of Roman law was a gradual and continuous historical process; the law was adapted to territories well beyond those its Roman originators could have imagined and to uses of which they had not conceived. The Spanish acceptance of Roman law meant that it spread beyond Western Europe and came to the Spanish territories of the New World.

Roman law was used to support various, even opposing, ideas. For instance, its maxims could support both absolutism and popular government: while the maxim "What pleases the prince has the force of law" (Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem) was used as an argument for royal absolutism in various countries, on the other hand, "What touches all must be decided by all" (Quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbetur) was used to justify representative government and even rebellion against oppressive regimes. Roman law's influence persisted beyond the end of the early modern period, as it served as the main model for Napoleon Bonaparte's Civil Code (1804).

Roman law today

Today, Roman law is no longer applied in legal practice, even though the legal systems of some states like South Africa and San Marino are still based on the old Ius Commune. However, even where the legal practice is based on a code, many rules deriving from Roman law apply: No code completely broke with the Roman tradition. Rather, the provisions of Roman law were fitted into a more coherent system and expressed in the national language. For this reason, knowledge of Roman law is indispensable to understand the legal systems of today. Thus, Roman law is often still a mandatory subject for law students in civil law jurisdictions.

As steps towards a unification of the private law in the member states of the European Union are being taken, the old Ius Commune, which was the common basis of legal practice everywhere, but allowed for many local variants, is seen by many as a model.

UNIT 3: INTERNATIONAL LAW