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This lex has been modified by the lex Arria Tullia de quibusdam legibus obsoletis abrogandis corrigundisve, enacted on on the a.d. VII Kal. Ian. ‡ Q. Arrio (III) A. Tullia cos. ‡ MMDCCLXXIV a.u.c..

Current version as modified by the lex Arria Tullia de quibusdam legibus obsoletis abrogandis corrigundisve

Previous version of the lex Minucia de eiuratione magistratuum

The lex Arria Tullia de quibusdam legibus obsoletis abrogandis corrigundisve, approved on the a.d. VII Kal. Ian. ‡ Q. Arrio (III) A. Tullia cos. ‡ MMDCCLXXIV a.u.c., replaced the preamble, the phrase “Comitia Populi Tributa” was completed as “Comitia Centuriata and Comitia Tributa” throughout, the phrase “twenty-four (24) hours” and “forty-eight (48) hours” was changed to “a nundinum (192 hours)”, and the phrase “45 days” to “a month” throughout this lex. Text was also added to II.B.

This lex clarifies the legal definition of magisterial resignation, consequences of resignation, and those procedures legally necessary to validate and remedy magisterial vacancy due to a resignation of office, in accordance with the Constitution of Nova Roma, Section IV, on 'Magistrates', which states that an office becomes vacant when a magistrate resigns or dies while in office. The language of this lex is binding on resignation of magisterial offices elected in the in the Comitia Populi Tributa and in the Comitia Plebis Tributa.

I.A. An elected magistrate resigns from office by tendering his or her notification of a resignation to the presiding official (defined below) of the comitia in which the resigning magistrate was elected.

I.B. The Tribunes of the Plebs are the presiding officials of the Comitia Plebis Tributa. A resignation of an office that was elected in the Comitia Plebis Tributa may be tendered in writing directly to one or more Tribunes of the Plebs, or else is tendered to the Tribunes of the Plebs by posting a notice of resignation via the official Comitia Plebis Tributa list, or a list that is supported by Nova Roma as a Public Forum.

I.C. The Consuls and Praetors are the presiding officials of the Comitia Populi Tributa. A resignation of an office that was elected in the Comitia Populi Tributa may be tendered in writing directly to one or both Consuls or Praetors, or else is tendered by posting a notice of resignation on a list that is supported by Nova Roma as a public Forum.

II.A: A vacancy of office is legally established when an appropriate presiding official acknowledges in writing the receipt of a tendered resignation to the resigning magistrate. A vacancy may also be legally established when the Censors inform the presiding magistrates that a magistrate is unreachable after an absence of 45 or more days.

II.B: Within twenty-four (24) hours of receiving notification of a resignation, the presiding official of the respective comitia – any one of the Consuls or Praetors, or any one of the Tribunes of the Plebs, as the case may be, shall acknowledge receipt in writing to the resigning magistrate.

II.C. Consuls shall not accept a resignation from office of a magistrate elected in the Comitia Plebis Tributa.

II.D. Tribunes of the Plebs may only accept the resignation from office of a magistrate elected in the Comitia Populi Tributa as in II A and B when none of the Consuls or Praetors is available to accept the resignation on behalf of this comitia.

III. Elections shall be held within 45 days of the established vacancy for a suffect magistrate in the legally appropriate comitia, according to prevailing legal procedures governing elections of that comitia.

IV. This lex does not in itself restrict a former magistrate from standing for election in the Comitia Plebis Tributa or in the Comitia Populi Tributa to fill the vacancy caused by his or her resignation, and for which he or she is eligible to hold.

V. The presiding official of a comitia who lawfully acknowledges receipt of a resignation from office of any magistrate who was elected in either the Comitia Plebis Tributa or Comitia Populi Tributa, as outlined in this lex, shall be responsible for communicating this information to the Censors, the Magister Aranearius and to the citizenry via public fora within the following forty-eight (48) hours from the time that the resignation goes into effect.

Praetorian commentary on the textual history of the law

Comment I. The publication of this law has contained, for a decade, a variant text for this very same lex which was in fact just a non-final draft of the rogatio, never to be accepted by vote. This draft version was published as the primary text, and the real, accepted text was only given as the second text on this page. The final version of the lex Minucia as accepted by the comitia tributa only addressed the magistrates elected by the comitia tributa, because in those years a strict interpretation of the Constitution prevailed according to which a lex accepted by the comitia tributa may regulate magistrates elected by that comitia, and a lex accepted by the comitia centuriata may regulate only the centuriate magistrates. Consul Minucia Strabo presented first only one rogatio which discussed both the tribal and the centuriate magistrates' resignations in one law. She later corrected it and divided the proposal into two rogationes, one about the tribal magistrates' resignations, to be passed by the tribal comitia, and another about the centuriate magistrates, to be passed by the centuriate comitia. The tribal one passed, the centuriate law failed. Editors of the tabularium of the day, for an unknown reason, decided to put the original, unified law which discussed the resignations of both types of magistrates in one law as the primary text of this lex, but it was not correct, and it was never a law. In this new publication of the lex Minucia, the praetor (edict pending) removes the unofficial draft text (it can be found in the history section of this page), and we publish only the valid version of the lex Minucia as accepted by the comitia.

Comment II. The lex Arria Tullia de quibusdam legibus obsoletis abrogandis corrigundisve also contained an instruction to change the preamble of the lex Minucia, but the text as voted on and accepted by the comitia was probably corrupted and had an editorial error, because the new preamble would have been an exact sentence, unchanged, from the previous version of the preamble, in a form that was totally contradictory to the other changes in this lex. The praetor therefore declared (edict pending) that section V.A. of the lex Arria Tullia de quibusdam legibus obsoletis abrogandis corrigundisve was not implementable, and was disregarded when adding the changes from the lex Arria Tullia to this lex Minucua.