Actio in ius concepta trial#
Actio in ius concepta free#

Under a lex Hostilia (an early statute of unknown date), a person who had been taken prisoner in war, or who was absent on an official mission, could be represented by another citizen in a trial involving an allegation of theft committed against the absent person’s property ( actio furti). Children and insane persons were usually represented in court by their tutors or guardians ( tutores, curatores).

Boys under the age of 14 and girls under the age of 12 ( impuberes) could engage in litigation only with the approval of their guardian or tutor ( auctoritate tutoris), while women were permitted to litigate only under certain circumstances. Other than in certain exceptional cases, filiifamilias and filiaefamilias were also not permitted to participate in litigation.

Actio in ius concepta free#

Only free persons, who normally had to be Roman citizens, could act as parties to litigation ( litigantes, litigatores, adversarii). In proceedings concerning the division of common property ( actio communi dividundo, actio familiae erciscundae), either party was at the same time plaintiff and defendant. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.Īs in the modern law of civil procedure, Roman law recognized the existence of two parties to litigation: the plaintiff ( actor or petitor) and the defendant ( reus). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. As the evolution of Roman private law was greatly influenced by the development of legal procedure, the study of procedural law can illuminate the framework that cultivated substantive private law.

Thus, the law as a whole had little import for the Romans unless a recognized form of action existed whereby an individual could enforce a claim. In other words, unlike modern lawyers, who tend to emphasize rights and duties, and regard remedies as merely their procedural shell, the Roman jurists attached significance to remedies rather than to rights, to forms of action rather than to causes of action. This mainly derives from the fact that the early jurists, the shapers of the ius civile, were concerned not so much with the formulation of general principles regarding the rights and duties of individuals, but with establishing the factual circumstances under which an aggrieved person should be granted a legal remedy. In a sense, the law of actions may be construed as the most important part of the law. Roman private law was closely connected with the law of civil procedure, otherwise recognized as the law relating to actions.