Each case was to be decided afresh from the laws of the State, which mirrors the unimportance of judges’ selections for future cases in civil law methods at present. From 529 to 534 AD the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I codified and consolidated Roman law up till that time, so that what remained was one-twentieth of the mass of legal texts from before. As one authorized historian wrote, “Justinian consciously looked back to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to restore it to the height it had reached three centuries before.” The Justinian Code remained in force within the…