What idea from corpus juris civilis book 1 would eventually influence western legal systems explain your answer?

Answer 1

You question is quite vague because there was not such a thing as a book 1 of the Corpus Juris Civilis. The Corpus Juris Civilis came in four parts and each part had several books. The Codex Justinianus came in 12 books. The Digesta came in 50 books. the Institutiones came in 4 books. Justinian never made an official compilation the Novellae (part four) and there were several unofficial versions complied by various jurists.

One could say that book one of the corpus Juris Civilis was Book one of the Codex Justinianus. However, book 1 of this work concerned ecclesiastical law (which applied to the Orthodox Christian church), sources of law and the duties of high offices.

It was not one particular book which made the Corpus Juris Civilis influential. It was the work as a whole which made an impact. The Codex Justinianus provided an example of comprehensive codification of Law. The Digesta provided a comprehensive textbook on Roman law (it was compiled as an advanced law student textbook).

Important principles of the Coprus Juris Civilis were civil law (juris civilis) and jus commune. Civil law is a legal system which has core principles which are codified into a reference system of statutes which are the primary sources of the law. It contrasts with British and American common law, where decisions by judges on cases are based on precedent on the principle that similar cases should not be treated differently on different occasions. Civil law proceeds from abstract, general, underlying and invariant principles established in statutes and it holds that case law is subordinate to statutory law. Jus commune translates into common law, but it is different from the Anglo-American common law . It refers to core principles of civil law and to common or public law applied to general cases as the common or natural rule of right and as opposed to jus singulare established for special cases.

The rediscovery of the Corpus Juris Civilis in a library in Pisa in 1070 and the development of methods to study it by four professors at Bologna University, who also established the legal method of studium civilis, provided the foundation for the training of law students and the creation of a class of professional lawyers. Bologna University (the first university in Europe) attracted students from all over Europe. Later other universities in Western Europe also provided this teaching. Ius commune enabled lawyers to institute new legal systems whose substantive (and abstract) rules followed the Corpus Juris Civilis on the basis of its jus commune, and which could replace existing legal traditions and customary laws. Studium civilis entailed the study of law statutes and subsuming a case to the abstract principles of the statutes, rather than making use of precedent.

The first civi law code was created by the emperor Frederick I (reigned 1122-1190) for the Holy Roman Empire. The legal categories of the Corpus Juris Civilis, persons, things and actions, provided the model for categorisation of the Napoleonic Code. The compilation of the civil law codes of many modern European countries drew from the Corpus Juris Civilis and the Napoleonic Code.