20 HAR YARD LA W RE VIEW. So much as to the responsa prudentium. The judicial acts of the Emperor were decreta and rescripta. The decreta were decrees, final or interlocutory, in a cause. The rescripts were letters sent to the judges or to the parties in a suit, giving the decision which ought to be rendered. There seems to have been no substantial difference in their effect upon a suit; unquestionably they were alike obligatory upon the judges in the cases in which they were given, but the question arises, as with the responsa prudentium^ — were they binding precedents? That in the classical period of the Roman law decreta had some- times the force of precedents, seems the more probable opinion. Gaius, we have seen, gives the constitutiones principum among the sources of the law, and he defines the term thus : *' Constitutio principis esty quod imperator decreto vel edicto vel epistula constituit^ nee iinquam dubitatum est, quin id legis vicem optineat, cum ipse imperator per legem imperium accipiaV (Gaius, I. § 5). So Ulpian : " Quodcumque igitur imperator per epistulam et sub- scriptionem statuit, vel cognoscens decrevit vel de piano interlocutus est vel edicto prcecepit, legem esse constat Dig. I. 4, i, § I. Again Pronto, who, to be sure, was an orator and rhetorician, rather than a jurist, in an oration to Antoninus Pius, said : " Tuis decretis, imperator, exempla publice valitura in perpetuu^n sanciuntur , , . tu, ubi quid in singulos decernis, ibi tiniversos exemplo adstringis : quare si hoc decretum tibi proconsidis placuerit formam dederis omnibus omniinn provinciarum magistratibus, quid hi ejusmodi causis decernant^ Fronto, I. 6. See also Decretum divi Marci, D. IV. 2, 13 ; XLVIII. 7, 7. On the other hand, Justinian says that the binding force as precedents of the imperial decrees had been doubted by some, though he adds, ^' vanam scrupulositatem tam nsimus quam corrigendam esse censuimus. He proceeded to remove any doubt in the matter, and declared, " Si imperialis majestas causam cogni- tionaliter examinaverit et partibus cominus constitutis sententiam dixerit, omnes omnino judices^ qui sub nostro imperio sunt, sciant hoc esse legem non solum illi causes, pro quaproducta est, sed omnibus similibus . . . cum et veteris juris conditores constitutiones, qucB The practice of not discriminating between the different kinds of writings necessarily led to the practice of not discriminating between the authors themselves, — which is only another way of saying that the transfer of the authority of the responsa to juristic literature in general had become an accomplished fact." Sohm, Institutes (Ledlie's Transl.) § 17. See also the " Law of Citations " (a. d. 426), Cod. Theod. I. 4.
