of the Previous Administration of Justice

For the usual procedure in criminal and civil causes the former
republican mode of administering justice was substantially retained.
Criminal causes were still disposed of as formerly before the different
jury-commissions competent to deal with the several crimes,
civil causes partly before the court of inheritance or,
as it was commonly called, of the -centumviri-, partly before
the single -iudices-; the superintendence of judicial proceedings
was as formerly conducted in the capital chiefly by the praetors,
in the provinces by the governors. Political crimes too continued
even under the monarchy to be referred to a jury-commission;
the new ordinance, which Caesar issued respecting them, specified
the acts legally punishable with precision and in a liberal spirit
which excluded all prosecution of opinions, and it fixed
as the penalty not death, but banishment. As respects the selection
of the jurymen, whom the senatorial party desired to see chosen
exclusively from the senate and the strict Gracchans exclusively
from the equestrian order, Caesar, faithful to the principle
of reconciling the parties, left the matter on the footing
of the compromise-law of Cotta,(29) but with the modification--
for which the way was probably prepared by the law of Pompeius
of 699(30)-that the -tribuni aerarii- who came from the lower ranks
of the people were set aside; so that there was established a rating
for jurymen of at least 400,000 sesterces (4000 pounds), and senators
and equites now divided the functions of jurymen which had so long
been an apple of discord between them.

Appeal to the Monarch

The relations of the regal and the republican jurisdiction were
on the whole co-ordinate, so that any cause might be initiated as well
before the king's bar as before the competent republican tribunal,
the latter of course in the event of collision giving way;
if on the other hand the one or the other tribunal had pronounced
sentence, the cause was thereby finally disposed of. To overturn
a verdict pronounced by the jurymen duly called to act in a civil
or in a criminal cause even the new ruler was not entitled,
except where special incidents, such as corruption or violence,
already according to the law of the republic gave occasion
for cancelling the jurymen's sentence. On the other hand
the principle that, as concerned any decree emanating merely
from magistrates, the person aggrieved