punishments it had been the province of the king not only to
investigate and decide the cause, but also to decide whether the
person found guilty should or should not be allowed to appeal for
pardon. The Valerian law now (in 245) enacted that the consul must
allow the appeal of the condemned, where sentence of capital or
corporal punishment had been pronounced otherwise than by martial
law--a regulation which by a later law (of uncertain date, but passed
before 303) was extended to heavy fines. In token of this right of
appeal, when the consul appeared in the capacity of judge and not
of general, the consular lictors laid aside the axes which they had
previously carried by virtue of the penal jurisdiction belonging to
their master. The law however threatened the magistrate, who did
not allow due course to the -provocatio-, with no other penalty than
infamy--which, as matters then stood, was essentially nothing but a
moral stain, and at the utmost only had the effect of disqualifying
the infamous person from giving testimony. Here too the course
followed was based on the same view, that it was in law impossible
to diminish the old regal powers, and that the checks imposed upon the
holder of the supreme authority in consequence of the revolution had,
strictly viewed, only a practical and moral value. When therefore the
consul acted within the old regal jurisdiction, he might in so acting
perpetrate an injustice, but he committed no crime and consequently
was not amenable for what he did to the penal judge.

A limitation similar in its tendency took place in the civil
jurisdiction; for probably there was taken from the consuls at
the very outset the right of deciding at their discretion a legal
dispute between private persons.

Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers