Judicial systems which is superior

Status
Not open for further replies.

Anton Bruckner

Puritan Board Professor
The Roman model, or the Old Testament model. I constantly hear a lot of praise for the Roman justice system, and many Christians like to import old testament principles into the Roman system. I would like to know why is the Roman system advocated to the detriment of the Old Testament model.
 
The Roman model, or the Old Testament model. I constantly hear a lot of praise for the Roman justice system, and many Christians like to import old testament principles into the Roman system. I would like to know why is the Roman system advocated to the detriment of the Old Testament model.


You know that the Roman system is different from the Common Law system, right? The reason I ask is I have rarely heard anyone even discuss the Roman system except in legal circles. I'd go further and say that the Common Law system fairly self-consciously adopted many elements of Old Testament jurisprudence into it. For example, the common law definition of burglary tracked the OT law, as did the requirement of more than one witness in the case of murder.

Maybe you are using Roman system differently from what I understand it to be. Basically, as I understand it (in a criminal law context), in Roman law the finder of fact is a panel of judges who are given the task of investigation as well. In the CL system, the judge is neutral, the case is presented by a prosecutor who directs the investigation, and the fact finder is a jury.

An argument can be made that both the CL and the Roman systems have elements also found in the OT system, but I tend to think the CL consciously adopted those elements while the Roman system developed those elements from the light of nature. Blackstone goes into this fairly heavily, but few read him any more.
 
I am leaning more to common law these days. Vic, I picked up volume 3 of Blackstone for about $5 the other day. Looking at acquiring the other ones on the cheap.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top