After the Social War – which had the character of a civil war between Italian allies and Rome loyalists – which was resolved only by Rome granting citizenship to almost all Italian communities, the main question was how Italians could be integrated into the Roman political system. [160] The tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus attempted in 88 BC. J.-C. to pass laws granting greater political rights to Italians; One of the additions to this legislative program involved the transfer of command of the First Mithridatic War from Sulla to Gaius Marius, who had returned to politics. Flower writes: “In agreeing to promote Marius` career, Sulpicius. decided to set aside republican norms in order to control the political scene in Rome and pass its reforms. [160] The assemblies and councils worked according to established procedures supervised by the augurs. Assemblies did not have their own right of legislative initiative, but were convened by judges and voted only on matters referred to them by the president of the court. [6] [65] The power conferred on a judge was such that he could reject votes cast by an electoral bloc and ask him to reconsider his choice. [69] Over the years, laws have been passed requiring written voting, attempts to reduce voter intimidation, and procedures have been put in place to monitor voting and prevent voter fraud.
[70] The election was not about who received the most votes, but who could be confirmed first by a majority of the voting blocs. [71] All votes were to be completed in a single day and renewed in case of interruption or interruption. [72] The Roman system of government may seem a little strange to us, but to them it worked for nearly 500 years. The republic was governed by the Senate. The Senate passed all the laws and collected all the taxes. All members of the Senate belonged to the patrician class or wealthy landowners. Magistrates were elected representatives who served as representatives of the people in the conduct of public affairs. [113] There were two broad categories of magistrates, ordinary magistrates such as consuls, products of the republican constitution, and extraordinary magistrates such as dictators, remnants of the monarchical constitution and mainly reserved for emergencies. [113] Each magistrate possessed potestas, the power to exercise the powers of the office conferred on him by customary law or law. [114] The most powerful magistrates, such as extraordinary magistrates, consuls, and praetors, had a kind of authority known as empire, the authority to command in the military or legal sense. [115] In The Republic, Cicero argued that laws are not sufficient for a just state. There must also be freedom.
“But if freedom is not enjoyed equally by all citizens,” he explained, “it is not freedom at all.” Therefore, freedom can only exist if “the people have supreme power” in government. In Roman constitutional law, assemblies were a sovereign authority, with the power to promulgate or reject any law, confer magistrates, and make all decisions. [6] This conception of popular sovereignty arose elegantly from the Roman idea that the people and the state (or government) were one and the same. [53] With a single law, the people, duly assembled, had to suspend the authority, norms and precedents of the Republic, as well as the old laws that had long remained unchanged. [54] The culture of consensual decision-making led by the Senate of the middle republic was killed by the Sulla dictatorship:[167] The two people who were endowed with this culture had been purged, as well as the very justification for this culture. Under the pressure of an external threat, the patricians were forced to recognize the office of plebeian tribune (Latin: tribuni plebis), who were declared sacrosanct,[31] that is, they were declared inviolable and anyone could be summarily executed for violation of the sanctity of his person. [32] This was the basis of the tribune`s ability to veto any political act (literally “I forbid”) or to protect a person from an injustice committed by a judge, known as an intercessio or auxilium. [33] The people gave the tribunes, whose number is unclear,[31] two assistants known as plebeian aediles. [34] The Constitution of the Roman Republic was a set of uncodified norms and customs that,[1] along with various written laws,[2] guided the procedural management of the Roman Republic. The constitution emerged from that of the Roman kingdom, developed in terms of content and significance during the almost five hundred years of the republic – almost beyond recognition.[3] .