an opinion for the same to be accepted by the legal order in general, making the authority of officials and legal scholars, and their official legal activities, dependent upon their fidelity to the authoritative texts themselves. The entirety of Roman jurist law was developed through a relatively strict doctrine of interpretation taking both not only legal aspects into consideration, but also the demands of correct formal thinking into consideration (albeit adapted to legal realities).38 (Though Savigny praises the Roman use of analogous reasoning,39 modern doctrine has disputed whether or not the Romans actually applied this method).40 So far, Roman methodology does not differ from modern method, though the precise elements of the interpretative doctrine might differ - such as, for instance, the admissibility of extra-legal interpretative facts. One example in this respect is the admissibility of aequitas (comparable to modern issues of equity and justice) into the interpretative scheme as a principle of Roman law. For while Roman jurists allowed aequitas to be made use of as a standard of interpretation (on account of the acknowledged status of aequitas in doctrine), modern Swedish lawyers would refrain from employing such terms. Swedish lawyers, rather than accepting aequitas as an independent source of law, have an instrumental view on justice and equity, defining the decision and opinion in relation to their material correspondence with the content of the sources of law as being the standard for objective justice. From a philosophical perspective, of particular interest is the epistemological accessibility of the laws of natural reason.According to stoicism, the laws of nature are ingrained in the human soul and mind (see Cicero et al.),41 whereby natural law is episp a r t v i i , c h a p t e r 1 572 38 Schiller, Roman Law: Mechanisms of Development, pp. 373-385 and 569-584;Wieacker, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 618-639 and 662-675. 39 Savigny, System1, pp. 294-296. 40 Schiller, Roman Law: Mechanisms of Development, pp. 378-380. 41 See Welzel, Naturrecht, pp. 37-47;Verdross, Abendl. Rechtsph., pp. 44-49; Sauter, Phil. Grundlagen, pp. 44-54; Schiller, Roman Law: Mechanisms of Development, pp. 548-560.
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