re important in a political point of view,
and more easily admitted of alteration--the system of judicial
administration. First of all came the important limitation of the
supreme judicial power by the embodiment of the common law in a
written code, and the obligation of the magistrate thenceforth to
decide no longer according to varying usage, but according to the
written letter, in civil as well as in criminal procedure (303, 304).
The appointment of a supreme magistrate in Rome exclusively for the
administration of justice in 387,(9) and the establishment of
separate police functionaries which took place contemporaneously
in Rome, and was imitated under Roman influence in all the Latin
communities,(10) secured greater speed and precision of justice.
These police-magistrates or aediles had, of course, a certain
jurisdiction at the same time assigned to them. On the one hand,
they were the ordinary civil judges for sales concluded in open
market, for the cattle and slave markets in particular; and on
the other hand, they ordinarily acted in processes of fines and
amercements as judges of first instance or--which was in Roman
law the same thing--as public prosecutors. In consequence of this the
administration of the laws imposing fines, and the equally indefinite
and politically important right of fining in general, were vested
mainly in them. Similar but subordinate functions, having especial
reference to the poorer classes, pertained to the three night--or
blood-masters (-tres viri nocturni- or -capitales-), first nominated
in 465; they were entrusted with the duties of nocturnal police as
regards fire and the public safety and with the superintendence of
executions, with which a certain summary jurisdiction was very soon,
perhaps even from the outset, associated.(11) Lastly from the
increasing extent of the Roman community it became necessary, out of
regard to the convenience of litigants, to station in the more remote
townships special judges competent to deal at least with minor civil
causes. This arrangement was the rule for the communities of burgesses
-sine suffragio-,(12) and was perhaps even extended to the more
remote communities of full burgesses,(13)--the first germs of a
Romano-municipal jurisdiction developing itself by the side of that
which was strictly Roman.

Changes in Procedure

In civil procedure (which, however, according to the ideas of that
period included most of the crimes committed a