Legis Actio
idea · 2 works · 4 mentions · 5 anchored passages
Legis Actiones · legis actio · statute-process · Procedure · actio sacramenti · lege agere
in the texts
Institutes of Roman Law
The archaic Roman procedure of statute-process (legis actio), contrasted with the later formulary system's pecuniary condemnation.
Omnium autem formularum, quae condemnationem habent, ad pecuniariam aestimationem condemnatio concepta est.
So even when we claim a corporeal thing, like land, a slave, a garment, gold or silver, the judex condemns the defendant to deliver not the thing itself, as in the older system of procedure, but its value in money.
From the expression of Gaius, non ipsam rem condemnat sicut olim fieri solebat, we might suppose that statute-process (legis actio) differed from Formulary procedure in that, while in the latter the condemnation was always pecuniary, in the former, as in the last stage of Roman Law, the plaintiff recovered the specific object of litigation and not its pecuniary value.
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
The general Roman category of formal legal actions/procedure discussed throughout the lecture.
Legis Actio, of which the exact meaning does not seem to have been known to Gaius, may be conjectured to have been the substantive form of the verbal expression, legem or lege agere, and to have been equivalent to what we now call Procedure.