by Wolfgang Waldstein[1]
The Roman jurists, quite matter-of-factly, recognized natural law to be an inherent normative order for mankind, recognizable through reason and, thus, applied it in concrete decisions. With this work, the Roman jurists developed a concrete knowledge regarding the practice of natural law, thereby making it a historic reality. Over time, the deviations from natural law, which existed in the old Roman law, were perceived more and more as being unjust. Through countless individual decisions, these were corrected by the Roman jurists, in order to be able to arrive at just decisions. This work by the Roman jurists was conducted over a time period of nearly 500 years, from the 2nd century BC to the 3rd century AD. As was mentioned in the introduction, the results of this work were published in the year 533 AD by Emperor Justinian as one of his codes of law, in a work known as the Digest. The rediscovery of this work in the Middle Ages and the study of it at the original academy of the artes in Bologna, resulted in this school’s becoming the very first university in Europe. This university then influenced the entire further development of legal culture in Europe. Upon this foundation, the “natural law codes ”, the General Prussian state law of 1794 (AL), the Napoleonic Code of 1804, and the 1811 Civil Code of Austria (ABGB) were created. Based on this, the ABGB, even today, can say in § 16: “Every person has innate rights, already intelligible through reason.”
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