252 HISTORY OF LAW 



upon which governments rest, have been potent forces in the estab- 

 lishing of constitutional limitations, written and unwritten, through- 

 out the civilized world, and in compelling arbitrary governments 

 to adopt constitutional forms in accordance with which their powers 

 shall be exercised. The various declarations and bills of rights found 

 in the constitutional history of Great Britain, the United States, and 

 France since the beginning of the seventeenth century have con- 

 tained unmistakable traces of the theory of the law of nature as 

 embodied in the natural rights and social compact assumptions. 

 But it may not be out of place to suggest that when a fact is estab- 

 lished, a theory to explain it may easily be found, if not in one philo- 

 sophical conception, then in another, and the development of the 

 conceptions of individual freedom and that governing bodies exer- 

 cise only a limited and delegated power can be traced among the 

 Anglo-Saxons to a time when theories of natural rights and social 

 compact were absolutely unknown. It may be seriously doubted 

 by a student of comparative constitutional law whether the history 

 of governments and institutions in the Western world would have 

 been substantially different had no such explanation as natural 

 rights and the social compact been invented. 



The Roman civil law at the end of the period of the Republic 

 consisted of legislation of various kinds, added to a body of cus- 

 Roman tomary law which had attained some measure of recog- 

 cfose^f nitlon by embodiment in the praetorian edicts, and 

 Republic. expositions by the jurisconsults already speaking 

 with quasi-public authority, although their designation as official 

 organs of the state was not made until a later period. This was the 

 golden age of the civil law, and to the spirit which was infused into 

 it during this stage of its development may be credited the intel- 

 lectual conquest of the civilized world when the darkness of the 

 Middle Ages was dispelled by the dawn of the Renaissance. But 

 during the twelve intervening centuries the civil law of Rome cut 

 a great figure in the world's history as the result of the conception, 

 first generally entertained during the Empire, that all law is based 

 directly on the authority of a ruler. And the practical result of that 

 conception was codification. 



The codification of the Roman law under the Emperors was an 

 important step in its history, and of the greatest interest in con- 

 Codifi- nection with the general development of jurisprudence, 



cation. on account of the light which it throws on the nature 

 and effect of a like process in other systems of law. But it is of 

 historical significance also because it was the Roman law in a codi- 

 fied form which was extended over Europe and exercised an influence 

 on the development of jurisprudence among the Teutonic peoples. 



The process of codification under the Empire was simple. The 



