Codex Juris: Ius Gentium

Why?

Why a codex? I think that's the first question that it is likely to be formulated facing a work about the laws and the other legal acts that creates the juridical system of Nova Roma. The answer is simple: when the number of laws, decrees and other subordinate legal acts reaches a certain critical mass, what follows is confusion, contradictory statements and the very certainty of the law, the very basis of a law system, is put in danger. When this situation comes in existence, it has always been the solution to produce a codification of the law, meaning, even before the actual production of a single book containing the laws, a work of analysis of the legal documents to ascertain what is still in force and what has been, expressly or not, abrogated.

Making the law accessible

What this codex intends to do is exactly to put some order in the abundant, sometimes written in a dubious legal form, often overlapping, legal and para-legal production of Nova Roma, trying to make the corpus juris novae romae as easily accessible by the every citizen as possible following the principle that the law is much less prone to be wrongly interpreted, enforced or abused as much as it is clear and well kwon by the community that under that law lives.

Organization of the Codex

However, a codification effort is always, by its nature, a subjective work. Sometimes, two legal provisions given in different times overlap, but not perfectly. Sometimes the interpreter has to make choices when it comes to establishing the extent of a law and deciding how to deal with it and make the appropriate links. Even the division of the legal acts into different categories is a subjective matter. It is only fair, therefore, to express some caveats:

1. This work is not, (or at least not yet at the time this is written), an official document of Nova Roma, the only official source for Nova Roma Legislation being the Tabularium of Nova Roma;
2. It follows from what is said above that the way this work has been composed and the comments that are and will be added to the various laws are the personal opinion of the writer or writers. This should always be kept in mind by the reader;
3. The division into categories has been done following the general principle of keeping with the order that to the various matters were given by the Constitution of Nova Roma, with some exception in those cases (like the Penal Category) where a new category seemed appropriate for practical reasons
4. I've decided to propose only the laws currently in force, as amended, and giving links to the amending documents. The laws that have been explicitly abrogated are not part of this Codex (even if they might be part of it in the future under an "Abrogated" section). The laws that have been implicitly abrogated in full or that have been partially abrogated are present with the abrogated text clearly marked and the appropriate reference to the abrogating law.
5. The decrees of the Senate and the Priestly decrees, for their special nature, have been included when they have a direct effect on the cives of Nova Roma. Decrees that estabilish internal procedures and appointments shall not be present in this Codex.
6. Magisterial decrees shall be added at a later time, at the bottom of the appropiate sections.

In the hope that this work will be useful to the cives of Nova Roma and to their Magistrates,

--Domitius Constantinus Fuscus 01:54, 9 March 2006 (CST)