lex

/leks/

In medieval jurisprudence, a body or collection of various laws peculiar to a given nation or people; not a code in the modern sense, but an aggregation or collection of laws not codified or systematized.

Also, a similar collection of laws relating to a general subject, and not peculiar to any one people.

In modern American and English jurisprudence, a system or body of laws, written or unwritten, or so much thereof as may be applicable to a particular case or question, considered as being local or peculiar to a given state, country, or jurisdiction, or as being different from the laws or rules relating to the same subject-matter which prevail in some other place.

In old English law, a body or collection of laws, and particularly the Roman or civil law.

Also a form or mode of trial or process of law, as the ordeal or battel, or the oath of a party with compurgators, as in the phrases legem facere, legem vadiare, etc.

Also used in the sense of legal rights or civil rights or the protection of the law, as in the phrase legem amittere.

In Roman law, a law; the law. This term was often used as the synonym of jus, in the sense of a rule of civil conduct authoritatively prescribed for the government of the actions of the members of an organized jural society.

Lex is used in a purely juridical sense, law, and not also right; while jus has an ethical as well as a juridical meaning, not only law, but right. Lex is usually concrete, while Jus is abstract.

In English we have no term which combines the legal and ethical meanings, as do jus and its French equivalent, droit. In a more limited and particular sense, it was a resolution adopted by the whole Roman "populus" (patricians and plebeians) in the comitia, on the motion of a magistrate of senatorial rank, as a consul, a praetor, or a dictator. Such a statute frequently took the name of the proposer; as the lex Falcidia, lex Cornelia, etc. A rule of law which magistrates and people had agreed upon by means of a solemn declaration of consensus. In a somewhat wider and more generic sense, a law (whatever its origin) or the aggregate of laws, relating to a particular subject-matter, thus corresponding to the meaning of the word "law" in some modern phrases, such as the "law of evidence," "law of wills," etc.

Other specific meanings of the word in Roman jurisprudence were as follows:

Positive law, as opposed to natural law. That system of law which descended from the Twelve Tables, and formed the basis of all the Roman law.

The terms of a private covenant; the condition of an obligation. A form of words prescribed to be used upon particular occasions