Abusi e illeciti dei giudici nel processo tardo-antico

Late Roman law sources on trial misdeeds of the judges - the ones holders or committed to judicial power rather than private arbitrators chosen by litigators - let distinguish between willful offences, whether to enrich or not, and negligent misdeeds, committed with no aim to harass litigators. This distinction has not only scientific value, having indeed reflections on different penalties of various misdeeds of the judges. Overlooked that the majority of the authors support criminal nature and objective liability of the judge in late roman law, as well as atypical nature of judges' offences, the sources of IV-V century outstand the concourse, generally cumulative, of criminal as well as civil liability of the judges for their trial offences, misdeeds that can be sanctioned even without a past legislation on the matter, with an ad hoc ex post rule. Anyway codifications of V-VI century help judges offences to be put in written and past rules of law. A fundamental issue, often left aside for the only study of liability of judges , is the chance left by law to the judge's misdeed victim to react against it within the same trial where it has happened. If late roman trial was not scarcely vitiated by judges' offences and misdeeds, conceiving it as completely sunk in corruption and arbitrary power is historically unfit