§ 18.: The work of the Jurisconsults under the Principate.

The official organs which made Roman law were now, as under the Republic, assisted by the unofficial or semi-official activity of the jurisconsults. Some of these teachers were now given public recognition as authoritative sources of law. We are told that Augustus granted the right to certain jurisconsults to respond under imperial authority; and this practice was continued by his successors on the throne. Amongst the earlier of these patented jurisconsults was Masurius Sabinus, of the time of the Emperor Tiberius. The granting of this privilege did not diminish the activity of the unpatented lawyers, although it doubtless diminished their influence; but it gave the response of its possessor as authoritative a character as though it had proceeded from the emperor himself. The response was usually elicited by a party to the suit and presented to the Judex. He was bound by the decision; but naturally only on the assumption that the facts as stated in the petition which elicited the Rescript were the facts as exhibited in the course of the trial It may have been understood that the opinion of only one patented counsellor was to be sought in any single case; for in the early Principate there seems to have been no provision determining the conduct of a Judex when the opinions of his advisers differed. Later it must have been possible to elicit the opinion of several patented jurists on a single issue; for the Emperor Hadrian framed the rule that, in the case of conflicting responses, a Judex should be entitled to use his own discretion.