— Also termed jus vetus. Cf. JUS NOVUM.
“In the later Empire (which dates from the fourth century) there were two groups of sources of law: first, the ‘jus vetus’, or ‘jus’ simply, i.e. the old traditional law, the development of which was completed in the classical period of Roman jurisprudence (in the course of the second and the beginning of the third century); secondly, the ‘leges’ or ‘jus novum’, i.e. the later law which had sprung from imperial legislation. These two classes of law, ‘jus’ and ‘leges’, mutually supplementing each other, constituted the whole body of law as it existed at the time, and, taken together, represented the result of the entire development of Roman law from the earliest times down to … the epoch of the later Empire.” Rudolph Sohm, The Institutes: A Textbook of the History and System of Roman Private Law 116–17 (James Crawford Ledlie trans., 3d ed. 1907).
