Each case was to be determined afresh from the legal guidelines of the State, which mirrors the unimportance of judges’ choices for future circumstances in civil law techniques at present. From 529 to 534 AD the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I codified and consolidated Roman law up till that point, so that what remained was one-twentieth of the mass of legal texts from before. As one legal historian wrote, “Justinian consciously looked again to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to revive it to the height it had reached three centuries before.” The Justinian Code remained in pressure in…
