What are the reasons for the development of Roman law?

The development of ancient Roman law occupies a very important historical position in the history of world legal system. Although ancient Roman law has long been something in our memory, the basic spirit and most contents of ancient Roman law are still timeless and still apply to us today. As a scholar said: "Roman law is dead, and all the people who lost their coercive power have gone;" Why do scholars who died today still study tirelessly? Yue and Roman laws have the greatest influence on the laws of modern countries, and their principle is order. All topics can adapt to the social background and evolve reasonably, so Roman law is a compulsory course in all countries. "It can be seen that Roman law is not only the cultural heritage of the Romans, but also the cultural heritage of people all over the world. Talking about ancient Roman law is mainly from the earliest written law in Rome in the fifth century BC, the Law of Twelve Bronze Tables, to the Complete Works of Laws of Various Countries compiled by Justinian. During this period, Roman law experienced the process of birth and maturity, and finally formed a civil law system with far-reaching influence on later generations. As the most complete legal system in the world at that time, it made detailed provisions on private ownership and commodity economic relations based on it, which played a guiding and reference role for later commodity economic legislation. For example, the French Civil Code and the German Civil Code have adopted a large number of concepts, principles and systems in Roman law. As the German jurist Jelling said, "Rome conquered the world three times, the first time by force, the second time by religion and the third time by law. And this third conquest may be the most peaceful and lasting conquest. " (2) Roman law has a history of more than 2000 years since it came into being. Why did such a developed law appear in the slave society of ancient Rome more than 2000 years ago? Why does it transcend time and space and have lasting vitality? The author thinks that this is the product of the interaction of many factors, such as the political model of ancient Roman society, the management of colonial areas, the prosperous commodity economy of ancient Rome, the social structure of ancient Rome, the rise of legal education in ancient Rome, the formation of professional jurist class and the attention paid by Roman rulers to law. The author will discuss the genetic reasons for the highly developed legal civilization in ancient Rome from the above five aspects. 1. As a special political model of ancient Roman society, the democratization of the * * * system is the basic factor for the development of Roman law. The author notes that when talking about the reasons for the development of ancient Roman law, most scholars believe that the prosperity of commodity economy is the decisive factor for the development of ancient Roman law, and the author thinks that the views obtained from this are debatable. Because although the prosperity of commodity economy can affect the development of superstructure such as law to a certain extent, it is impossible for commodity economy to achieve sustained prosperity and development without a relaxed political environment and the permission of the rulers within the system. For example, in ancient China, there was a brief economic prosperity in the Song Dynasty, but in the end it did not lead to the prosperity of the laws of the Song Dynasty, nor did it surpass the laws of the previous Tang Dynasty. The reason is that China ancient society has always been a centralized country and a typical power society. As a power society, it excludes the financial society, because the excessive accumulation of financial resources of social members may change from financial resources to power. If the ruler hinders the transition from financial resources to power, financial resources may seek to solve this transition by force. Therefore, the ancient rulers of China always followed the policy of emphasizing agriculture and restraining business, and only under special circumstances would they temporarily relax their control over restraining business. However, due to the limitation of public ownership of land, commercial development cannot pose a threat to the rule. What kind of political system, what kind of legal system will be matched with it, what kind of legal system will be what kind of economic model exists, so the type of political system plays a decisive role in the legal development of a country. The history of Rome is not only a history of external expansion, but also a history of constant struggle between civilians and nobles. Foreign expansion requires the formation of a strong army, and it is mainly civilians who undertake military obligations. In the early days of the Roman Republic, civilians had neither land nor power. Around the issue of land and power, civilians fought with nobles for two or three hundred years, constantly forcing nobles to make concessions. In this process, Rome's * * * and system have been continuously reformed, developed and improved. In the struggle between civilians and nobles, they gained the power to elect civilian protection officials and form civilian meetings to make resolutions on major national issues, thus initially forming a dual political structure of checks and balances between aristocratic politics and civilian politics in Rome. This dual political structure laid a solid foundation for the future development of Roman law and initially formed a harmonious system in Rome. In the * * * political system, the people enjoy extensive rights to participate in and discuss state affairs, but the decision-making power of the people may turn into tyranny of the majority, because the perceptual component of public opinion is often greater than the rational component. Aristocratic politics (elite politics) hopes to fix the rights of both sides in some form to prevent the unlimited expansion of the power of civilian meetings, while civilians are also worried that aristocratic forces will hinder the exercise of their rights and hope to fix the rights of both sides in some authoritative way. Therefore, in the process of mutual struggle and compromise, a series of laws have emerged that stipulate the rights of both sides. For example, the Twelve Copper Tables Act, the Lisini-Sukstu Act and the Wintus-Hosius Act. The appearance of these legal norms has greatly changed the social structure of Rome. Clans, nobles and civilians began to become equal and unified Roman citizens before the law, civil society was basically formed and private ownership of property was established. Finally, the democratization and political system of Rome were formed, and at the same time, it created institutional conditions for the highly developed commodity economy after Rome. Second, the rapid expansion of Rome was due to the management of conquered areas, which contributed to the diversified development of Roman law. Due to the rapid expansion of Rome, by 30 BC, Rome annexed Egypt and became a powerful empire across Europe and Asia. As the saying goes, it is more difficult to rule the world. In order to effectively maintain the rule in the conquered areas, Rome established two systems: immigrant autonomous regions and provinces. Immigrant area refers to the area where Roman citizens immigrated. Because immigrants are Roman citizens, they enjoy full civil rights in law. With the gradual increase of immigrants, immigrants have obtained the autonomy of immigrant areas, and the laws implemented in immigrant areas are the same as those in Rome. However, the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by immigrant areas has the characteristics of modern federalism, which has played a positive role in consolidating the Roman political system, preventing excessive centralization and promoting the development of commodity economy. The environment and status of cities and regions in the provinces established by Rome are not consistent. Most of them are surrender areas that pay taxes to Rome and basically have no autonomy. In addition, most residents in these provinces are not citizens in the Roman sense, so they do not enjoy many rights of Roman citizens, because it is obviously inappropriate to implement Roman civil law in these areas. In view of this, the Roman rulers specially formulated a series of legal systems for such areas, which are different from the Roman civil law, and we call them civil law. The appearance of the Law of Peoples greatly enriched the content of Roman law system, complicated the application of law, provided a platform for the rise of legal education and the formation of jurist class, and also made Roman law develop in a diversified direction. Third, the prosperity and development of commodity economy is an important factor in the development of Roman law. Commodity economy is essentially an exchange economy. Since there is exchange, there must be exchange subjects. Since it is called exchange, it contains a premise that the subject status is equal, such as unequal status and no exchange is needed; Since it can be exchanged, it means the existence of private ownership. Without private ownership, people don't need to exchange. The author believes that the three basic conditions necessary for the development of commodity economy have laid the foundation of the system in the early stage of the development of Roman law (discussed by the author above), so the commodity economy can develop rapidly in Rome. The rapid development of commodity economy will inevitably lead to various civil disputes, and the complexity of social relations provides a broad space for legislation; Secondly, the development of commodity economy leads to the diversification and complexity of law, which makes the application of law difficult, which provides an opportunity for the emergence of professional jurists. Thirdly, commodity production and commodity exchange promoted the popularization of the concept of equality of rights and autonomy of the parties, laid the foundation for the spread of natural law thought born in ancient Greece in Rome, and promoted the rapid development of Roman jurisprudence and private law. Fourthly, the rise of legal education in ancient Rome promoted the continuous improvement of Roman law. Throughout history, we can find that law has always been the conventional method of social rule and management, whether in the Republic of China or the Roman Empire. In order to ensure a more orderly rule, legislators need to constantly improve their legislative skills; In order to apply the law correctly, the judiciary needs to make necessary explanations in more complicated laws, so jurisprudence came into being. Jurisprudence has been combined with state power from the beginning, because the state's legislation and laws do not allow others to interpret it at will, and the state must monopolize this power to master discourse hegemony, so legal education has sprung up with the support of rulers. The rise of legal education trained a large number of professional jurists, who studied and answered legal questions and served as government legal advisers, which played an important role in perfecting Roman law. Fifth, the Roman ruling class attached importance to the law, which sublimated Roman law in practice. Without the Roman ruling class's attention to law, there would be no rise of Roman legal education and the birth of Roman code. The compilation of every code in the history of Roman legal system has pushed Roman law forward a big step, especially the Complete Works of State Law compiled by Emperor Justinian (also known as Justinian Code) made a systematic summary of Roman law, which gathered the essence of Roman law and marked the peak of its development. "In the history of our civilization, Roman law occupies a unique position. It developed from a narrow and rough rural law to a powerful city-state law and then to an imperial law. " (3) Such a mature law, even known as a developed law, must have more reasons for its development than what I discussed above. But whatever the reason, 1 1 century later, with the revival of Roman law, Roman law blossomed everywhere in the world. As a song goes, "Don't ask me where I come from", I have come to your side.