'Iustitium' e sospensione della 'iurisdictio'

The common placement of the iustitium as an “institution” of Roman law and its projection towards modern opinions (enshrined into expressions as “Ausnahmezustand” and “Notstand”, material law or emergency powers, “stato di eccezione” or “stato di necessità”) it requested a survey, which moves from the ancient fonts. A specific attention is dedicated to the relation between iustitium and dictatorship. Out of 13 or 14 iustitium cases which have been chronicled by Livio in a time frame from 465 B.C. to 210 B.C., in 9 cases the iustitium would be proclaimed by dictators: among this latest, 5 are placed between 458 B.C. and 386 A.C., the others between 362 A.C. and 301 A.C. Limiting the survey to the episodes next to the institution of the praetor urbanus, it emphasizes the total obscuring of the praetorship during the period in which dictators were appointed. This datum on one side it seems to strengthen the identification of the iustitium with the suspension of the iurisdictio, on the other side it underlines the specific contingencies which induced to suspend the judicature as well as the other magistratures in that years. Only thanks to the change in meaning of the term iustitium, which starts from the age of Augusto, it becomes institutionalized an act, as that one concerning the suspension of the iurisdictio, which seems it has had a simple administrative attribute before.