Codified Laws Codified Law During the centuries of Roman power, a great body of law was brought into existence. We owe the use of Latin in our legal system to the Roman system. Perhaps the most important characteristic of Roman law was the codification of laws. Codification is the orderly arrangement of laws into understandable, compact volumes.
Laws tend to develop separately over time.
The Roman practice was to prepare codes and often revise obsolete laws by preparing new codes. Some form of this practice has been adopted by most modern civilizations. One of the earliest Roman codes is called the Twelve Tablets. They were prepared by a special committee in 450 BC and were published on tablets of bronze or wood. The original tablets were destroyed, but copies have survived.