Chap. XVII.... Bad manner of enacting laws.

Laws should be directed to general objects, and not to particular cases; the rescripts of the emperors could only be considered as interpretations given by the legislator; now such interpretations could neither have a retrospective effect, nor the force of law, inasmuch as they are not clothed in the authentic form which characterises law.

A law of Caracalla was a law, and might have been an absurd one: a rescript of Marcus Aurelius, or of Julian, though an oracle of wisdom, should not be considered as a law, before an edict had given it the sanction of one.

Justinian may have been in the wrong, by giving the power of laws to several of the rescripts, if they contained absurdities; but it was not because they were made by those lawyers, who wrote in the name of Caracalla, or Comodus. The emperors no more made their rescripts, than Louis XIV. made the regulations of 1670.

This Nacrinus, who was a gladiator and notary, and afterwards the compiler of the rescripts of Caracalla, who reigned a few months, and lost the empire and his life by his folly, is a singular authority to quote in the Spirit of Laws.