Summary
The discussion of law takes a radically different turn with Cicero. He departs not only from Plato, whom he regarded as his master, but also from the entire Greek tradition by taking little interest in what the Greeks emphasized: that law consists of rules that are clear and fixed and publicly known to be so. One reason for this may be that Cicero was reflecting on the very different experience of the Roman Republic where there was little law in the form familiar to Plato and Aristotle, that is to say, explicitly formulated rules authoritatively declared to the public. The Twelve Tables, which were supposedly based on Greek models and enacted in the middle of the fifth century, were not a set of rules, but decisions on certain matters that were commonly disputed. Their provisions varied in form as well as substance and, taken as a whole, the Twelve Tables hardly constituted a comprehensive system of law. Nor is it clear how they were related to the many different sources of lex or rules for both private and public actions.
Although in the early Republic lex was generally spoken of as a declaration of the unchanging law, it was by no means obvious whether such rules were enactments of new law or merely declarations of existing law. And what constituted existing “law” was far from clear. Not only the edicts of a great variety of magistrates, but also informal arguments were used to settle disputes.
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- On the History of the Idea of Law , pp. 42 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005