to Roman law, fas neither constituted the empirical synthesis of the content of various systems, such as did ius gentium, nor did it constitute an ontological juridical necessity, as didius naturale.Fas was a system of moral law valid by virtue of its divine origin, that is valid as a set of dictates of what the gods of Rome permitted (fas) or forbade (nefas) in contrast with natural law, which was a system of law claiming validity by virtue of its own nature.13 Finally, while the rules of ius naturale and its rights and duties were unenforceable (see, for example, naturalis obligatio), the rules of fas were enforceable through various religious sanctions.14 Apart from the rules of fas, the Roman doctrine of sources included ius civile (ius privatum), ius publicum, ius gentium, leges, edicta magistratum, senatus consulta (sc.), edicta principis, andresponsa prudentium.15 A common feature of these sources of law and their validity is that in some aspect or another they were wholly dependent upon various types of human acts of approval and states of affairs for their legitimacy, validity, applicability, and enforceability. Accordingly, they, philosophically speaking, had a limited range of legitimacy, validity, applicability, and enforceability, while natural law,which some Roman lawyers held made up part of Roman law, was by its nature universal in all relevant aspects, but in reality unenforceable. A further characteristic of Roman law was its division into three main categories: ius civile (national law), ius gentium(international law), and ius naturale (natural law). Of the three, ius civile was a modification of either, or both, ius gentiumand ius naturale and only applicable to the human affairs of a particular nation, while ius gentiumwas the law of all human societies, and, finally, ius naturale, the law taught to all animals (Ulpianus, d. 233AD).16 The Roman notion of natural law a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 567 13 Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, Berger, ed., Fas and Ius naturale; Kaser, Ius gentium, pp. 25-27, see also n 92;Wieacker, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 275-276. 14 Wieacker, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 275-276. 15 Buckland, Roman Private Law, pp. 1-26; Robinson, Sources, pp. 25-53. 16 Schiller, Roman Law: Mechanisms of Development, pp. 558-560; Kaser, Ius gentium, pp. 55-56, 65-66, 70-74, and 558-560. However, the exact extent to which the Roman jurists actually used this tripartition of law has been discussed in Romanist literature.
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