But this resuscitated supreme jurisdiction of the kings, although Caesar discharged its duties with impartiality and care, could only from the nature of the case find practical application in exceptional cases.
Retention Of The Previous Administration Of Justice
For the usual procedure in criminal and civil causes the former republican mode of administering justice was substantially retained. Criminal causes were still disposed of as formerly before the different jury-commissions competent to deal with the several crimes, civil causes partly before the court of inheritance or, as it was commonly called, of the -centumviri-, partly before the single -iudices-; the superintendence of judicial proceedings was as formerly conducted in the capital chiefly by the praetors, in the provinces by the governors. Political crimes too continued even under the monarchy to be referred to a jury-commission; the new ordinance, which Caesar issued respecting them, specified the acts legally punishable with precision and in a liberal spirit which excluded all prosecution of opinions, and it fixed as the penalty not death, but banishment. As respects the selection of the jurymen, whom the senatorial party desired to see chosen exclusively from the senate and the strict Gracchans exclusively from the equestrian order, Caesar, faithful to the principle of reconciling the parties, left the matter on the footing of the compromise-law of Cotta,(29) but with the modification-- for which the way was probably prepared by the law of Pompeius of 699(30)-that the -tribuni aerarii- who came from the lower ranks of the people were set aside; so that there was established a rating for jurymen of at least 400,000 sesterces (4000 pounds), and senators and equites now divided the functions of jurymen which had so long been an apple of discord between them.
Appeal To The Monarch
The relations of the regal and the republican jurisdiction were on the whole co-ordinate, so that any cause might be initiated as well before the king's bar as before the competent republican tribunal, the latter of course in the event of collision giving way; if on the other hand the one or the other tribunal had pronounced sentence, the cause was thereby finally disposed of. To overturn a verdict pronounced by the jurymen duly called to act in a civil or in a criminal cause even the new ruler was not entitled, except where special incidents, such as corruption or violence, already according to the law of the republic gave occasion for cancelling the jurymen's sentence. On the other hand the principle that, as concerned any decree emanating merely from magistrates, the person aggrieved by it was entitled to appeal to the superior of the decreeing authority, probably obtained even now the great extension, out of which the subsequent imperial appellate jurisdiction arose; perhaps all the magistrates administering law, at least the governors of all the provinces, were regarded so far as subordinates of the ruler, that appeal to him might be lodged from any of their decrees.
Decay Of The Judicial System
Certainly these innovations, the most important of which-- the general extension given to appeal--cannot even be reckoned absolutely an improvement, by no means healed thoroughly the evils from which the Roman administration of justice was suffering. Criminal procedure cannot be sound in any slave-state, inasmuch as the task of proceeding against slaves lies, if not de jure, at least de facto in the hands of the master. The Roman master, as may readily be conceived, punished throughout the crime of his serf, not as a crime, but only so far as it rendered the slave useless or disagreeable to him; slave criminals were merely drafted off somewhat like oxen addicted to goring, and, as the latter were sold to the butcher, so were the former sold to the fencing-booth. But even the criminal procedure against free men, which had been from the outset and always in great part continued to be a political process, had amidst the disorder of the last generations become transformed from a grave legal proceeding into a faction- fight to be fought out by means of favour, money, and violence. The blame rested jointly on all that took part in it, on the magistrates, the jury, the parties, even the public who were spectators; but the most incurable wounds were inflicted on justice by the doings of the advocates. In proportion as the parasitic plant of Roman forensic eloquence flourished, all positive ideas of right became broken up; and the distinction, so difficult of apprehension by the public, between opinion and evidence was in reality expelled from the Roman criminal practice. "A plain simple defendant," says a Roman advocate of much experience at this period, "may be accused of any crime at pleasure which he has or has not committed, and will be certainly condemned." Numerous pleadings in criminal causes have been preserved to us from this epoch; there is hardly one of them which makes even a serious attempt to fix the crime in question and to put into proper shape the proof or counterproof.(31) That the contemporary civil procedure was likewise in various respects unsound, we need hardly mention; it too suffered from the effects of the party politics mixed up with all things, as for instance in the process of Publius Quinctius (671-673), where the most contradictory decisions were given according as Cinna or Sulla had the ascendency in Rome; and the advocates, frequently non-jurists, produced here also intentionally and unintentionally abundance of confusion. But it was implied in the nature of the case, that party mixed itself up with such matters only by way of exception, and that here the quibbles of advocates could not so rapidly or so deeply break up the ideas of right; accordingly the civil pleadings which we possess from this epoch, while not according to our stricter ideas effective compositions for their purpose, are yet of a far less libellous and far more juristic character than the contemporary speeches in criminal causes.