Decisions weren’t revealed in any systematic means, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised. Each case was to be determined afresh from the legal guidelines of the State, which mirrors the unimportance of judges’ decisions for future cases in civil law methods at present. From 529 to 534 AD the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I codified and consolidated Roman law up until that time, so that what remained was one-twentieth of the mass of authorized texts from before. Western Europe, meanwhile, relied on a mixture of the Theodosian Code and Germanic customary law until the Justinian Code…