Lex Pinaria

Lex Pinaria (Gaius, 4.15). Its effect is merely matter of conjecture. According to Studemund and Walter, a single judge was originally appointed at the close of the formal proceedings before the praetor, to try sacramenta: and this was altered by the statute, which prescribed an interval of thirty days between the proceedings before the praetor and the appointment of the judex. Keller supposes that its effect was not to create a necessary interval of thirty or any other number of days at all, but to transfer the hearing of sacramenta from the standing collegia of judges (decemviri and centumviri) to a single judex. Bethmann-Hollweg (Civil Process, i. p. 65) holds that it required all actions of debt for less sums than 1000 asses to be tried before a single judge.