Twelve Tables of Roman Law

Impact

The impact of the Twelve Tables was felt immediately in the context of the Conflict of the Orders as the laws showcased the legal bias of the government toward the patrician faction. The promulgation of the laws also precipitated yet another plebeian secession that would lead to more political rights for plebeians in the form of increasing powers for the tribune of the plebs and would end the decemvirate permanently. In the long term, the Twelve Tables served as the basis for the Roman legal code until it was replaced by the far more systematic Theodosian Code of the fifth century CE. The Theodosian Code would provide the basis for all other legal systems that later evolved in Western Europe, serving as the bedrock of what is now known as the civil law.

The exact reaction from the Roman people upon receiving the Twelve Tables is not clear from ancient sources. It is known, however, that along with the laws' promulgation, another by-product of the secession of 449 BCE was the passing of the Leges Valeria Horatiae, or Valerian and Horatian Laws. These laws immediately expanded the rights of the plebeians by increasing the powers of the tribune of the plebs, increasing the tribune's ability to intercede on the behalf of the plebeians in the patrician-controlled Senate. Furthermore, four years later the Lex Canuleia was passed, overturning the stipulation in Table XI that no patrician was permitted to marry a plebeian and allowing for the eventual merging of the two orders.

These laws did not solve the conflict between the orders, nor did they usher in a new era of democratic rule. However, taken as part of the greater evolution of the relationship between the patricians and the plebs, the passage of the Twelve Tables can be seen as a pivotal moment in Roman history. The next 180 years of the Roman Republic witnessed the slow but inevitable growth of patrician and plebeian equality, culminating in the passage of the decisive Lex Hortensia in 287 BCE. This law granted the decisions of the Concilium Plebis the power of law over the entirety of the Roman population, essentially ending any legal difference between patrician and plebeian.

The influence of the Twelve Tables as a legal document gradually faded within the tradition of the Roman legal system. Because the Twelve Tables had been destroyed in 390 BCE, they were referenced by legal theorists and scholars as a precedent, though they were eventually supplanted by more contemporaneous interpretations of legal practice and procedure. Nevertheless, they remained the only attempted written organization of Roman law until the emperor Theodosius commissioned the Theodosian Code in 429 CE. Its publication nine years later set the stage for the final codification of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) of the emperor Justinian, completed in 534 CE. Both of these codifications drew directly on the Twelve Tables, as the earliest extant record of Roman law, and inspired the civil law—the predominant legal system in Europe and South America, taking a great deal of its structure and content from Roman sources.