I. L’irripetibilità del processo criminale nell’esperienza giuridica romana

Abstract

Summary The prohibition of double trial for one and the same fact is a principle that we find theorized and applied in the legal experience of the Romans above all in the field of civil procedural law. Hence modern Romanistic legal science concentrated on this area of law. There are only few specific studies devoted to this subject with reference to criminal procedural law. The problem deserves to be taken up and studied in depth. First of all the author defines the scope of the preclusive effects produced by the judgement as it results from an exhaustive analysis of the epigraphic Lex repetundarum (linn. 1–4, 5, 56). On a more general level, the sources show that the principle of the non-repeatability of criminal prosecutions found substantial application both in the late republican and imperial ages, albeit with the limits and the exceptions that the author highlights. In addition to jurisprudence, the subject of the unrepeatability of the trial lent itself to being dealt with in schools of rhetoric.