LAW OF CITATIONS. — Name by which part of a constitution issued at Ravenna in 426 by Valentinian III is designated, a constitution which, as a whole, sought to regulate all the sources of law.
As regards the part that concerns us here, it established that, in legal proceedings and with legislative force, opinions expressed by five jurists could be cited: Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, Modestinus, and Gaius, all of whom, with the exception of the latter, had been granted the ius respondendi (that is, the faculty of issuing opinions in the emperor’s name). The constitution further prescribed that the opinions of the jurists cited by the five aforementioned jurists could also be cited, provided that the citation was confirmed by collation with the original text, something extremely difficult at that time.
The judge had to adhere to the opinion of the five jurists when it was unanimous; in the absence of unanimity, he had to follow the opinion of the majority; in the event of an equal number in favor of opposing positions, he had to conform to the position shared by Papinian. When none of these three cases occurred, the judge was free to follow the opinion he considered best.
The constitution demonstrates the degree of decline of the legal culture of the time, given that the resolution of the dispute came to depend on an automatic criterion, constituted by the opinions of the five jurists, who formed a kind of collegium; this earned the L. of C. the name of “tribunal of the dead.”
The L. of C. was inserted into the Codex Theodosianus (I, 4, 3) and into the first Codex compiled at Justinian’s command (v. CORPUS IURIS CIVILIS).