Constitution of The Roman Empire

The Constitution of the Roman Empire was an unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent. After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Beginning with the first emperor, Augustus, the emperor and the senate were technically two co-equal branches of government. In practice, however the actual authority of the imperial senate was negligible, as the emperor held the true power of the state. During the reign of the second Roman Emperor, Tiberius, the powers that had been held by the Roman assemblies were transferred to the senate. The neutering of the assemblies had become inevitable, in part because the electors were often ignorant as to the merits of the important questions that were laid before them.

The powers of an emperor existed by virtue of his legal standing. The two most significant components to an emperor's power were the "tribunician powers" and the "proconsular powers". The tribunician powers gave the emperor authority over Rome's civil government, while the proconsular powers gave him authority over the Roman army. While these distinctions were clearly defined during the early empire, eventually they were lost, and the emperor's powers became less constitutional and more monarchical. The traditional magistracies that survived the fall of the republic were the Consulship, Praetorship, Plebeian Tribunate, Aedileship, Quaestorship, and Military Tribunate. Any individual of the senatorial class could run for one of these offices. If an individual was not of the senatorial class, he could run for one of these offices if he was allowed to run by the emperor, or otherwise, he could be appointed to one of these offices by the emperor. Mark Antony abolished the offices of Roman Dictator and Master of the Horse during his Consulship in 44 BC, and shortly thereafter the offices of Interrex and Roman Censor were also abolished.