Comments on: The Annotated Justinian Code

The Annotated Justinian Code

jedicus — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:23:10 -0800

The Corpus Juris Civilis, also called the Code of Justinian, is a foundational document in (continental) Western law. Perhaps because of its limited impact on the common law, no English translation existed until the 1930s. The best English translation of the two main parts of the CJC, the Codex Justinianus and the Novels, was the life's work of a single Wyoming Supreme Court Justice, Fred H. Blume.

Blume was born in Germany in 1875 and emigrated to the US in 1887. His knowledge of German would be quite fortunate because Germany had become a hub of Roman law research in the 19th and 20th centuries. Blume began his work in 1919 and continued until 1943. In those 24 years he produced an annotated manuscript of some 4,521 pages, which was bequeathed to the University of Wyoming upon his death in 1971, along with his personal library of over 2,300 volumes, mostly regarding Roman law. That manuscript is now available online as the Annotated Justinian Code. NB: the site may be a little confusing. The links on the right ("AJC Quick Links") will take you to searchable plaintext PDFs of the annotated Codex Justinianus. The rest of Blume's work (the annotated Novels and a lengthy paper about the Codex Justinianus) are available as scanned typescripts via the links on the left.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:27:23 -0800

Wow. Thank you!

By: anewnadir

anewnadir — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:30:48 -0800

Excellent post. I learned about Blume in passing during a first-year law school survey course on comparative study of legal systems. The CJC is fascinating: I wonder whether the world would look the same if William the Conqueror had brought it over the channel instead of the more adaptable "Common law".

By: idiopath

idiopath — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:53:10 -0800

So was justice named after Justinian, or was it a coincidental name?

By: jedicus

jedicus — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:57:52 -0800

I should add that if you want a fairly readable overview of what the legal system was like under the CJC, check out "The Code of Justinian, and its Value." "Procedure as Illustrated in Code" is a particularly good section. So was justice named after Justinian, or was it a coincidental name? The name Justinian does ultimately derive from justus ("just"), but it did not originate with Justinian I. So, no, a coincidence in this case.

By: Segundus

Segundus — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 01:18:05 -0800

It seemed amazing that there was no English translation until the 1930s until I remembered that judges used to get a lot of practice reading Latin and would not have found it a problem.

By: 1adam12

1adam12 — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 01:46:33 -0800

Just an aside: I meet a LOT of American lawyers who think that the common law is the dominant legal system in the world.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 01:57:20 -0800

It is difficult to overestimate the impact that Roman law has had until today in civil law jurisdictions. This was brought to me quite forcefully in my childhood by the loud swearing re. Justinian and all Romans which punctuated my otherwise very politely spoken mother during her law studies...

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 04:50:27 -0800

Now that I've read a bit of it, I'm amazed by just how clear and readable Blume's translation is, even beautiful in places. I was expecting something turgid and ponderous, but this very aesthetically pleasing.

By: ersatz

ersatz — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 08:18:39 -0800

no English translation existed until the 1930s I want to say that it's surprising, but perhaps educated people were expected to understand Latin anyway.

By: General Tonic

General Tonic — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 09:07:40 -0800

I've repeatedly tried to read about and understand the difference between Common Law and Roman (Civil) Law. I still don't think I get it. Common Law - Laws get made somehow; judges can interpret the laws; judges can make law where none exists (what?!); such judicially created law is generally binding on other/future courts Civil Law - laws get made somehow; judges can't interpret the laws (what?!); judges can not make law where none exists Is that right? And if my summary is right, then why do I still feel completely unsatisfied with my understanding? Can someone shed some light here? What concept, detail or or perspective might I be missing?

By: Salamandrous

Salamandrous — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 09:40:48 -0800

Civil law grew out of the Roman legal tradition. It has some core concepts that are not shared by common law (absolute ownership as opposed to leasehold from the king, for example). The impact of these conceptual differences varies. It tends to place more value on legal scholarship (it is much more likely to find scholarship cited in civil law decisions than common law ones) and less on precedent. The modern implementations of civil law tend to include a code, tend to completely separate the judge career stream from the lawyer career stream (you can become a judge out of law school but the pay and prestige are not comparable to a common law jurisdiction), and tend to have much shorter decisions citing to code rather than precedent. This varies among jurisdictions. Not all civil law jurisdictions have written codes. Common law jurisdictions have adopted codes for many specific areas of law. There is only so much inconsistency among courts any system can get away with even without formal stare decisis, but common law courts find plenty of ways to get to the rulings they want. I think it is most helpful to think of them as historically distinct legal traditions that have acquired plenty of their own baggage along the way.

By: deo rei

deo rei — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:09:22 -0800

The differences between common and civil law are as small or as big as you choose to make them. It is often said that common law is "case law" and civil law is "book law" but precedent plays a large role in both systems and the Codex Justinianus is extremely casuistic when you get down to it. Conversely, Anglo-Saxon common law is firmly rooted in French (Normandic) feudal law, which was strongly influenced by Roman law. The major difference from a developmental point of view is that whereas the UK has experienced an essentially uninterrupted, organic growth over the centuries, both Germany and France instituted large-scale revolutionary reforms: Germany around 1500 by the "reception" of Roman law and again with the BGB in the early 1900's, France in 1804 with Napoleon's Code Civil. Another developmental difference is that civil law owes a lot to the French and Italian universities that sprang up in the Middle Ages (earning it the somewhat derisive epithet "professor's law"), whereas in the UK law practice has traditionally had a much stronger vocational character.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:18:42 -0800

precedent plays a large role in both systems and the Codex Justinianus is extremely casuistic when you get down to it Maybe I'm misunderstanding your use of the word casuistic, but it seems like you're suggesting that the Codex Justinianus embraces the use of precedent. Can you give an example? Blume says (page 85):

And it was provided that advice of superior officials need not be followed. "For if a wrong decision has been given," wrote Justinian, "the vice of that should not be made greater by other judges. Judgments should not be given by following examples, but in accordance with law. All our judges must follow in the footsteps of truth, law and justice."

To me that sounds like a pretty solid rejection of making decisions based on precedent.

By: deo rei

deo rei — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:56:24 -0800

What I mean is that the law given in the Codex Justinianus is case law. The codex is largely a compilation of imperial edicts which address lots and lots of specific cases. As such it is not so much systematic as anecdotal or casuistic. In the larger Corpus Iuris Civilis of which the C.J. is a part this is even more apparent. So in that sense the C.J. and C.I.C. made precedent into law. In retrospect you can say that there has been a steady effort over the centuries to systemize the C.I.C., which culminated in the Code Civil and the Burgerliches Gesetz Buch, but the C.I.C. bears little resemblance to those highly systematic, liberal/bourgeois efforts.

By: cool breeze

cool breeze — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:19:18 -0800

How very interesting! Thank you!

By: homunculus

homunculus — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:48:12 -0800

Thanks for posting this.