The Civil Status in Roman Law

By: Anavitarte, E. J.*

People in Ancient Rome were classified according to their standing to enjoy and exercise their rights within the Roman society. This classification determined their legal, social and political position in the city, and it is called 'civil status'.

This civil status sort people into at least three (3) groups, each one with two options: (a) those who possessed or not their freedom, (b) those who possessed or not Roman citizenship, and (c ) those who possessed or not the paternal power inside their family.

Each of these situations were called status, and represented the possession─or not─of a legal attribute, such as freedom, Roman citizenship, and familial authority. However, they were not the attribute itself, but the legal effects of their standing.

Definition of Civil Status

Romans, in order to sort which regulation they would apply to a specific case, they examined first the civil status of the people involved in that case, since normative bodies were different, wherever for a slave, for a foreigner, or for a senator. Because of Roman legal system.

Civil Status: Civil standing of a person to enjoy and exercise their rights.

This definition, is based on two great moments of compilation of Roman law, first, from the Justinian compilations that define the relationship between citizens and the city, as can be seen in the chapter of the Digest about general aspects of law:

Cum igitur hominum causa omne ius constitutum sit, primo de personarum statu ac post de ceteris, ordinem edicti perpetui secuti et his proximos atque coniunctos applicantes titulos ut res patitur, dicemus.
(Therefore, all rights are caused by the agreement of men, first with respect to the legal regime of persons, and then to the rest, followed by the ordering of perpetual edicts, and we would say later, as regards the regime of titles and things)
Hermogenian ^[1]
(Translation from the author*)

And a second moment, during 16th and 17th centuries, with the Renaissance glossers of Roman law, who did an interpretive work of the sources at their disposal, in order to, besides compiling, to systematize the way in which Romans understood legal relationships, and applied their legal system.

From these systematizations emerged the─now─evident division between the state of family and that of citizenship.

[1]: Hermogenian | Digest: Vol. 1, Tit. 5, Sec. 2.

HSD

Classification of Civil Status

In order to classify the stages of the civil status of people in Roman law, two (2) characteristics must be taken into account: (a) they were progressive, that is, one cannot be moved from one status up to another without also maintaining the previous status; and (b) they were staggered, that is to say, the next status represents an improvement in the legal conditions of whoever is located there.

These status were:

Status Libertatis: or freedom situation, and represents the ability of the person to own himself.
Status Civitatis: or citizenship situation, which represented membership to Roman civil society.
Status Familiae: or family situation, which placed people according to their role in the family.

People who had the three states, that is, they were freemen, Roman citizens and heads of their common family law would be called homo optimus iure.

However, there were other factors that also influenced when placing a person in their civil status, such as sex, age or infamy, which although they were not a stage in the civil status, limited the ability to enjoy or exercise rights.

Status Libertatis

In Roman law, the status libertatis (status of being freeman) sorted people according to the ownership of their body and life. Freemen being those who had no master but themselves, and slaves those who were not masters of themselves.

For this reason, the status of freemen would be the basis on which the legal personality of individuals and the recognition of any other right are built.

In general, the status of freemen is associated with the legal attribute of freedom, since only a person who owns himself can act of his own free will, being the slaves constrained to act as ordered by their owner. However, the terms are not equivalent, hence some states of quasi-slavery present in Roman law, such as the children given in mancipium.

For Romans, freedom, which was the ability to act at will, being the basic distinction between a thing─totally lacking will─and a person. For this reason slaves were legally considered things, although they were not it naturally.

Like the rest of the civil status of person, the status libertatis would have two legal options: (a) that of freemen and (b) that of slavery.

Freemen

Freemen were those one with full autonomy to act physically, without the consent of anyone and according to their abilities. This distinction of "physically" is important, because legally autonomy was configured only with the status of sui iuris.

Free people could be of three categories,

Freeborn (ingenuus) who were the people belonging to a gens and who had never been deprived of their freedom; words as ingenuous and gentle came from the semantic meaning.
Freedman (libertus) who were those had been slaves previously, and had regained their freedom by emancipation.
Foreigner (peregrinus) who despite not being citizens, were free people and were able to get in Rome. However, they can be differentiated from both the freed and the freeborn because they are not part of Roman civil society.

Slaves

Slaves were not really considered people, but things, personal property of their bosses; they were totally without rights, and whose master could do whatever they wanted with them.

Status Civitatis

In Roman law, the status civitatis (status of being citizen) was the legal status of belonging to the populus romanus or Roman civil society. It determined the legal remedies that a person have in relation to the city of Rome, and classifies free people into Roman citizens and foreigners.

Roman Citizens

Roman citizens were those who have a legal, social and moral bond with Rome, manifested in the duty to serve in Roman army, and in return, with the ownership of quiritary rights, which would be the rights to marry, inherit, trade, vote and become a magistrate.

Foreigners

They were made up of all those who were not Roman citizens, but were able to get in Rome, therefore they did not enjoy the same advantages as citizens. They were in general:

Pilgrims: They were free people who lived in Roman territory but did not have citizenship, who became a large majority of society, especially at the time of greatest territorial expansion of Roman Empire. With them ius gentium was applied, and their legal problems were settled by the pilgrim praetor.
Latins: They were made up of the people of Italic cities who had a historical and cultural bond with Rome, and who had been granted rights very similar to those of Romans. This term later was also applied to people who lived in some another Roman provinces.

Status Familiae

In Roman law, the status familiae (status of being headman) is the status of civil authority that a person possesses within their agnatic family and the Roman society. It consisted in the standing of individuals within the Roman socio-family environment.

It had two categories, (a) sui iuris or (b) alieni iuris, depending on whether it was subject to the paternal power of anyone or not.

Sui Iuris

Constituted of people who were the heads of their own family law and therefore were not subject to the paternal power of anyone. However, this did not imply per se the full exercise of their rights, since some sui iuris were in situations of legal protection, very similar to the status of an alieni iuris.

Capable: they were the Sui Iuris (Homo Optimus Iure) who had three characteristics: being men, of legal age, and mentally healthy.
Incapable: made up of Sui Iuris women, underage men, mentally insane people, with delays or communication deficiencies, deaf and dumb people. For these there were two figures depending on their incapacity aimed at protecting them financially: the Guardianship and the Curatorship.

Alieni Iuris

Roman citizens who were subject to the family law of another, or paternal power, were called alieni iuris. They had the same privileges of a Roman citizen, but reduced, since they depended on the mediation of the pater familias.

An example of this is the Roman civil marriage, which required the express consent of the pater familias to be exercised, even if the rights was in head of the filius.

Capitis Deminutio

The Capitis Deminutio or decrease of capacity is the Latin expression that designates the loss or diminution of the legal capacity of a person in Ancient Rome. This could be total or partial.

The Capitis Deminutio was divided into Maxima Deminutio, Minor Deminutio and Minimum Deminutio.

Capitis Deminutio Maxima is the absolute loss of legal capacity, suffered by a Roman citizen.
Capitis Deminutio Minor is the loss only of citizenship, suffered by a Roman citizen.
Capitis Deminutio Minima is the loss of legal autonomy, suffered by a Roman citizen.

Infamy

In Roman law, infamy is a civil sanction that degrades the legal capacity of a person.

Infamy altered the civil status, but it did so as an extraordinary condition, in cases where the citizen had had a behavior that could be considered socially reprehensible. As a consequence, they could not vote in elections, attend religious rites, occupy magistrates and even marry or trade.

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