Salvius Julianus - Influence and Legacy - Among Modern Scholars

Among Modern Scholars

"ome modern authorities would regard as the greatest of all the Roman jurists, not excluding even Papinian." "With Iulianus, the Roman jurisprudence reached its apogee." Professor William Warwick Buckland and Professor Peter Stein here following take stock of Julianus, his rôle and style, and compare him to a great jurist who flourished during the 18th century.

"No other jurist exercized so great an influence on the destinies of the law." His Digest was "a comprehensive treatise on both civil and praetorian law. ... The principal characteristics of Julian's work seem to be a very lucid style and a clear recognition of the fact that legal conceptions must move with the times. He seems to have played somewhat the part which Lord Mansfield did in English law. He did a great work of co-ordination and generalisation, sweeping away unreal and pedantic distinctions. Karlowa justly observes that the appearance of Julian was epoch making."

Professor Fritz Schulz places the Roman jurist Julianus in the context of the growth and development of Roman law, praising his personal contribution made when Roman jurisprudence reached its full height.

"The heroic age of creative geniuses and daring pioneers had passed away with the Republic. Now their ideas were to be developed to the full and elaborated down to the last detail. The culminating point in the curve of this development lies unquestionably with the age of Trajan and Hadrian, when the Principate itself reached it zenith. Julian's Digesta are the greatest product of Roman jurisprudence; they dominate legal science till the end of the Principate. After Julian a slight decline is sometimes observable, but on the whole the science of law remained on the same high level till the middle of the third century."