The Institutes of Roman Law

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Sources And Fundamental Conceptions. 6. The Sources of Roman Law. 6. The sources of Roman law are of two kinds: firstly, the Corpus juris civilis of Justinian; and secondly, the pre-Justinian sources of law. I. The Corpus Juris Civilis. The Corpus juris civilis of Justinian, in its modern form,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Sources And Fundamental Conceptions. 6. The Sources of Roman Law. 6. The sources of Roman law are of two kinds: firstly, the Corpus juris civilis of Justinian; and secondly, the pre-Justinian sources of law. I. The Corpus Juris Civilis. The Corpus juris civilis of Justinian, in its modern form, consists of four parts: the Institutes, Digest, Code, and Novels. (1) The Institutes. The Institutes (published Nov. 21, 533 A.d.) are a short manual or text-book, the object of which is to give a brief and comprehensive summary of the whole body of law as set forth in the remaining portions of the Corpus juris, and, at the same time, to supply the student with a general introduction to the study of the Corpus juris. It must be observed, however, that this text-book has, in itself, the force of law, the Institutes being published with the same statutory force as the Digest and Code. The Institutes are divided into four books, each book into titles, each title into paragraphs. The first sentence of each title, preceding 1, is called 'principium' (pr.). Thus German writers usually quote as follows: pr. I. (=Institutionum) de donat. (2, 7). Eod. is=eodem titulo; so that 4 I. eod., closely following another quotation (say pr. I. de donat. 2, 7), would be a shorterway of writing: 4 I. de donat. (2, 7), the name and number of the 6. title not being repeated. English writers quote briefly as follows: Inst . ii. J. pr. h. t . (=hoc titulo) refers to the particular title dealing with the subject-matter in question. Thus, if the subject under discussion were obviously gifts (donationes) pr. I. h. t. would refer to the prin- cipium of the title 'de donationibus' (Inst. II. 7). In other words, 'h. t.' refers to the title bearing on the subje...