Roman Law. One of the most distinctive features of Roman culture was its large and elaborately articulated legal system. There were three layers of what might today be called "laws." First, there were laws in the narrow, Latin sense: statutes passed by one of the legislative assemblies. These laws were fewer and less systematic than modern legal codes. Second, there were the decrees ("edicts") of the various magistrates, particularly the so-called urban praetor. The praetor's edict provided for most of the law in many areas such as contract, inheritance, and property rights. Other edicts governed, for instance, certain commercial transactions and any legal matters in the provinces. Third, there were interpretations of both the statutes and the edicts by legal professionals called "jurists." In some cases these interpretations were merely clarifications of the law, but in other cases they completely rewrote the original intent. Jurists had no formal...