ABSTRACT
Roman private law was closely connected with the law of civil procedure, otherwise recognized as the law relating to actions. In a sense, the law of actions may be construed as the most important part of the law. 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 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. 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. 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.
