Lack of Codification. While there was a lot of Roman law, especially by ancient standards, it was never systematically organized by modern standards. Neither the laws (leges) nor juristic decisions were ever collected before the fall of Rome. Much less did Roman law ever become a "code"—a set of laws all composed and enacted as a body. There are several reasons for this development. First, the American and British legal systems are self-organizing because of their reliance on precedent: later courts are required to follow the decisions of earlier ones. Roman courts were not similarly bound. In fact, since decisions were not published, precedent was hardly even available. The emperors had the authority to make binding interpretations but in practice could do so in only relatively few cases. Second, the jurists were not interested in a...