Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/545

 THE GREEN BAG had been committed by the emperors. These writings formed a vast mass of literature. They were so scarce and so costly that even the public libraries had nothing approximating to a complete collection; full also of discrepancies and contradictions, though special weight at tached to the writings of five eminent jurists, Papinian, Paulus, Ulpian, Modestinus and Gaius. The new law (jus novum) consisted of the ordinances of the emperors promulgated during the middle and later empire (edicta, rescripta, mandata, decreta) usually called by the general name of Constitutiones and now in a condition not much better. Immediately on his accession in 528, Justinian appointed a commission to deal with the imperial constitutions (jus novum). The commissioners ten in number were directed to go through all the constitutions to select such as were of practical value to retrench all unnecessary matter and gather them in order of date into one volume, getting rid of any contradictions by omit ting one or other of the conflicting passages. These statute Law commissions as we may call them set to work forthwith and com pleted their task in fourteen months. This Codex Constitutionum was formally promulgated and enacted as one great consolidating statute in 529, all imperial ordinances riot included in it being repealed at one stroke. The success of this first experiment encouraged the emperor to attempt the more difficult enterprise of simplifying and digesting the older law contained in the treatises of the jurists. A new com mission was appointed (Dec. 530) consisting of sixteen — the president tribune (Quaeter of the Empire), four professors of law and eleven practicing advocates. They were instructed to procure and peruse all the writings of all the authorized jurists (i.e. those who had enjoyed the jus respondendi) to extract from their writings whatever was of the most permanent value, avoid

ing repetition and contradictions and giving only one statement of the law on each point. They were to distribute the results of their labors into fifty books and sub divide each book into titles. These direc tions were carried out with surprising speed. Though the mass of literature which had to be read through consisted of no less than 2,000 treatises comprising three millions of sentences the commissioners presented their selection of extracts to the Emperor within three years (in 533), and he published it the same year as an imperial statute. "This is the volume which we now call the " Digest " (Digesta) or Pandects. It is the most precious mon ument of the legal genius of the Romans, and whether we regard the intrinsic merits of its contents or the prodigious influence it has exerted and still exerts, the most remarkable law book the world has seen." THE LAWYER IN POLITICS. Mr. Bryce entered Parliament as mem ber for the town Hamlet in 1880 and has been there ever since. It has been said that the House of Commons is "strewn with the wreck of lawyers' reputations." "Lawyers " as Mr. Bryce has himself said, ' ' are under the double disadvantage of having had less leisure than most other members to study and follow political questions, and of having contracted a manner and style of Speaking ill suited to an assembly which listens with impatience to a technical or forensic method of treating the topics which come before it." May it not be added that the lawyer is strongly suspected of taking up politics more as a useful move in the pro fessional game than from any sincerity of conviction? To this common fate of the political lawyer Mr. Bryce has been a bril liant exception. As a debator, as a party leader, and as an administrator, whether at the Foreign office, the Board of Trade or Dublin Castle he has earned high distinction and he has crowned his career in the still higher and nobler office which he now holds,