Professor: Tammy Gitto-Kania
Intro to Humanities
1 March 2015
Response Paper #4
This semester in my humanities course I have learned a variety of things, but the one idea that stood out the most to me were the Roman Twelve Tables. It was the legal system of Ancient Rome and legal development which happened before the seventh century AD about (450-451) BCE. I learned that this tables were written by Roman commissioners in an attempt by the romans to create a code law came the idea of this tables. Which were at insistences of the plebeians the lower class people, who felt their legal rights were hampered by the fact that court judgments were rendered according to unwritten custom preserved only within small groups of learned patricians the upper class people. This lead to the tables which the Romans begin to follow. The purpose of the tables was to hold society in places by following the democracy in which they lived at the time and allowing it to operate successfully.
To add, the Twelve Tables contributed to our society today. For example, this tables influenced the development of private international laws. Romans had indictments and jury trials just like todays. Also many defense mechanisms can be traced back to roman procedures like the idea of being innocent until proven guilty, which of courses underlies the United States criminal justice system. Not only that, but the purpose of written law to protect the people from one another, and from the power of