ABSTRACT
In the later imperial era, a great problem that confronted the administration of justice was the vast and diffuse nature of the legal materials that constituted the fabric of law. The Roman imperial government was always inefficient in collecting and harmonizing the enactments of emperors, the opinions of the jurists and the other legal sources recognized by the courts. The relevant records embodied material that was inconsistent with current legal practice or outdated. Further, they existed as a disordered mass scattered in archives of the central and provincial administration, as well as in the libraries of law schools and jurists. Under these conditions, it was difficult to ascertain the current state of the law. Even the central administrators and judicial magistrates had only a very imperfect knowledge of the law and precedents that were engaged as the basis of their decisions. The legal history of the late Empire is marked by the successive efforts of the imperial government to remedy this situation. The high-handed methods adopted to achieve legal certainty are characteristic of both the autocratic form of government and the totally dependent attitude and unquestioning subservience to authority that prevailed among the judges and jurists in this period.
