The Italian Legal Tradition

Italy has a strong claim to being considered the cradle of European legal culture. This is so because it was in Italy that Roman civil law was first developed in the ancient world and also in Italy that that system re-emerged in the Middle Ages to become the foundation upon which the majority of European states chose to erect their modern legal systems. Roman civil law began as the legal system of a small city state upon the banks of the river Tiber in central Italy. When the emperor Justinian ascended the imperial throne in 527 AD, the empire of which he became emperor was Roman mainly in name. In the west, Italy had been invaded during the fifth century by a tribe known as the Ostrogoths, or eastern Goths, who moved down from the north to dominate the peninsula.