Why was the code of Justinian important?

Answer 1

The actual importance of the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), which was later also called the Justinian Code, and which was commissioned by Justinian I and was published in a second edition in 534 is unknown. There is no historical record of the its impact at the time.

This work was forgotten after the fall of the Roman Empire until it was discovered in a library in Pisa in 1070. It had a big impact because many people were impressed with the key principles of Roman civil law: citizenship and citizenship rights, equality under the law, the right to a trial and the right to appeal, innocent until proven guilty, that the burden of proof rest on the accuser and not on the accused, and that an unfair law can be repealed. Eventually, though this work, Roman civil law became the foundation of the civil laws of many modern countries.

The Corpus Juris Civilis came in four parts

1) The Codex (book) which was a review of imperial laws going back 400 years (to the time of Hadrian). It scrapped obsolete or unnecessary laws, made changes when necessary and clarified obscure passages. Its aim was to put the laws in a single book (previously they were written on many different scrolls), harmonise conflicting view among jurists which arose from centuries of poorly organised development of Roman law and have a coherent body of law. It consists of 12 books, 1 book covers ecclesiastical law, the duties of high officers and sources of law, 7 cover private law, 1 criminal law and 3 administrative laws.

2) The Digesta which was a collection of fragments taken from essays on laws written by jurists (mostly from the 2nd and 3rd centuries) and which expressed the private opinions of legal experts. Most were from Ulpian (40%) and Paulus (17%). It was a large amount of writing which was condensed in 50 books. It was used by advanced law students

3) The Institutiones was a textbook for first year law students written by two professors. It was a series of extracts from statements on the basic institutions of Roman law from the teaching books by ‘writers of authority.’ In was largely based on the texts of Gaius, a jurist of the 2nd century AD.

4) The Novellae Constitutiones, which contained laws recently issued by Justinian.