Lex Rubria

Lex Rubria or GALLIAE CISALPINAE. When Cisalpine Gaul ceased to be a province and became part of Italy, it was necessary to provide for the administration of justice, as the usual forms of provincial administration would cease with the determination of the provincial mode of government. This was done (B.C. 49, Mommsen and Rudorff; B.C. 42, Savigny and Puchta) by a plebiscitum proposed by an otherwise unknown tribune, named Rubrius, of which a portion was discovered in 1760 on a tablet in the ruins of Veleia, which is preserved in the Museum at Parma. The whole lex probably covered five Tables, and was divided into chapters, of which we have caps. 20-22 complete, and parts of the 19th and 23rd: it apparently followed the order of the praetorian edict, and regulated the judicial competence and procedure of the Cisalpine municipia. Its policy seems to have been restrictive: e. g. it is provided that the municipal magistrates shall have jurisdiction to try by judices (in the ordinary Roman fashion) all suits in which the sum involved does not exceed 15,000 sesterces, and some even irrespective of their amount: as for actions to which their jurisdiction does not extend, they may conduct the preliminary inquiry, but must remit them for trial to the praetor at Rome. The 19th chapter relates to operis novi nuntiatio; the 20th, to damnum infectum; the 21st and 22nd, to the jurisdiction, especially restricting the right of imprisoning for money debts; and the 23rd, to the judicium familiae erciscundae.

The text of the lex is lithographed in Ritschl's Inscriptions, vol. i. Tab. xxxii., and may also be found in Mommsen's Inscriptions, vol. i. No. 205, as well as in the earlier editions of Carli, Pietro di Lama, and Haubold (Spangenberg). The subject is expressly handled by Savigny (Zeitschrift, ix.) and Puchta, Kleine civil. Schriften, 1851: cf. Huschke, Ueber die Klagformeln in der Lex Rubria; Gaius, pp. 203-242; Hugo, Civil. Magazin, vol. ii. pp. 431-496; and Dirksen, Obs. ad selecta legis Gall. Cisalp. capita, Berlin, 1812.