THE NORMATIVE EFFICACY OF SENATUS CONSULTA AND THE “PROTECTION OF THE WEAKER CONTRACTING PARTY”
THE NORMATIVE EFFICACY OF SENATUS CONSULTA AND THE “PROTECTION OF THE WEAKER CONTRACTING PARTY”

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the normative force of senatus consulta during the first century AD; drawing on recent scholarship, it argues that senatus consulta already produced direct legal effects and functioned as primary normative instruments of the Principate, progressively approaching the status of statutory law. Many criminal senatus consulta and the senatus consultum Neronianum are shown to have immediately modified the legal order without requiring praetorian intervention. The fact that the Senatus consultum Velleianum and the senatus consultum Macedonianum relied on praetorian remedies for their practical enforcement does not imply a lack of normative force; rather, it reflects a deliberate legal policy aimed at offering selective protection to socially vulnerable actors, in line with the earlier lex Laetoria. This reveals a Roman model of optional, party-initiated legal protection that balanced private autonomy with targeted tutela, confirming the senatus consultum as a genuine and direct source of law in the early imperial period.

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