responsa prudentium (ri-spon-s[schwa] proo-den-shee-[schwa]m). [Latin “the answers of the learned”] Roman law. The opinions and judgments of eminent lawyers or jurists on questions of law addressed to them. • The responsa prudentium originally constituted part of the early Roman civil law. Roman citizens seeking legal advice, as well as magistrates and judges, often referred legal questions to leading jurists so as to obtain their opinions (responsa). The responsa of some leading jurists were collected, much in the manner of caselaw digests, and many of them passed into Justinian’s Digest. The phrase responsa prudentium gradually migrated to the common law, but today it is of primarily historical use. — Also spelled responsa prudentum.
“[T]he judex, or as we would now call him, the referee, might have no technical knowledge of law whatever. Under such conditions the unlearned judicial magistrates naturally looked for light and leading to the jurisconsults who instructed them through their responsa prudentium, the technical name given to their opinions as experts, which were promptly recorded on tablets by their students or disciples.” Hannis Taylor, The Science of Jurisprudence 90–91 (1908).
“In [classical Latin] responsa prudentium is the usual form, but most of the legal sources … have prudentum following the example of Blackstone (1765).” The Oxford English Dictionary (2d ed. 1989).
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