#Monster strike call of the ancient code#

However, the new decemvirs would quickly diverge radically from the behavior of the previous ones. And, due to the success of the first and the plebeiansвЂ™ general distaste for consular authority, a second decemvirate was elected. Afterwards, however, some began to argue the need for two more tables, and thus incited a desire to appoint another decemvirate. Once the laws were revised in accordance with public opinion, the ten tables were passed into law. They encouraged the people to discuss among themselves the proposed laws and offer appropriate modifications, вЂњвЂ¦that the Roman people should have such laws, as the general consent might appear not so much to have ratified when proposed, as to have proposed from themselves.вЂќ After the decemvirs had produced ten tables, they brought the laws before the public for amendment.

#Monster strike call of the ancient code#

Upon their return it was decided that a decemvirate (a commission of ten men) would be elected to compile a code of laws for the Republic, that their decisions could not be appealed, and that no other magistrates would serve during that year. Nonetheless, the desire to create published law did not disappear, and a decade later, in 451 BCE, the tribunes were able to convince the patricians to embark on a course of legal reform вЂњsuch as might tend to the equalization of liberty.вЂќ As a result, ambassadors were sent out to study Greek institutions, customs, and laws, especially the Solonian legal code. But the patricians were quick to condemn Terentillus and his proposal, and the bill was abandoned. People should be subject to written law, laws that were known and consented to, rather than the vagaries of consuls or the esoteric laws of the pontiffs and patricians, he claimed. Terentillus proposed that, in order that the common people not be subjected to the whims of consular authority in perpetuity, five persons should be appointed to draw up and publish laws regulating consular power. He argued that the unbridled power of the consuls, in effect, created two despotic monarchs, and was the cause of much oppression and injustice against the plebeians.

Thirty years later, one of those tribunes, Caius Terentillus Arsa, began campaigning for legal reform. Referred to as the secessio plebis, or secession of the plebeians, this is the first recorded general strike in history, and it was so effective that the commoners were given their own magistrates, the plebeian tribunes (see, вЂњPlebeians campaign at Sacred Mount for economic and political rights, Ancient Rome, 494 BCEвЂќ). Terrified by the potential consequences of the secession, especially the cityвЂ™s vulnerability to attack by foreign forces, the patricians quickly offered conditions for reconciliation. In 494 BCE, feeling particularly dissatisfied with the consuls and patricians, the commoners of Rome abandoned the city and set up camp on the Sacred Mount. As Roman jurist Sextus Pomponius explained, 'At the beginning of our city, the people began their first activities without any fixed law and without any fixed rights: all things were ruled despotically by kings.' But even after the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic around 509 BCE, the capriciousness of legal authority had not waned.

But for Ancient RomeвЂ™s first three centuries there was no codified law. Modern civil law is derived from ancient Roman law, and Roman jurisprudence was, in turn, founded on the Law of the Twelve Tables.

By far the most prevalent legal system is civil law, with 4.5 billion people, nearly two-thirds of the worldвЂ™s population, living under this model, as nearly two-thirds of worldвЂ™s countries and territories have adopted either a civil law system or a mixed system with significant civil law influence. In our modern world, the legal systems of nearly all countries can be divided into five main types: Anglo-American-inspired common law, which is predominant in the nations of the former British Empire, religious law, customary (or folk) law, Roman-inspired civil law, and mixed (or pluralistic) law, which incorporates elements of multiple legal systems. For the last few millennia, it has been recognized that as levels of human organization expand past the size of tribes and villages into more complex societies such as cities and federations it is, in principle, beneficial to justice for people to submit to commonly agreed upon rules enforced by a legal system. One of the most fundamental characteristics of civilization is the rule of law.