QUAESTIO

1 definition found

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  QUAESTIO, Rom. civ. law. A sort of commission (ad quaerendum) to inquire 
  into some criminal matter given to a magistrate or citizen, who was called 
  quaesitor or quaestor who made report thereon to the senate or the people, 
  as the one or the other appointed him. In progress, he was empowered (with 
  the assistance of a counsel) to adjudge the case; and the tribunal thus 
  constituted, was called quaestio. This special tribunal continued in use 


  until the end of the Roman republic, although it was resorted to during the 
  last times of the republic, only in extraordinary cases. 
       2. The manner in which such commissions were constituted was this: If 
  the matter to be inquired of was within the jurisdiction of the comitia, the 
  senate on the demand of the consul or of a tribune or of one of its members, 
  declared by a decree that there was cause to prosecute a citizen. Then the 
  consul ex auctoritate senatus asked the people in comitia, (rogabat rogatio) 
  to enact this decree into a law. The comitia adopted it either simply, or 
  with amendment, or they rejected it. 
       3. The increase of population and of crimes rendered this method, which 
  was tardy at best, onerous and even impracticable. In the year A. U. C. 604 
  or 149 B. C., under the consulship of Censorinus and Manilius, the tribune 
  Calpurnius Piso, procured the passage of a law establishing a questio 
  perpetua, to take cognizance of the crime of extortion, committed by Roman 
  magistrates against strangers de pecuniis repetundis. Cic. Brut. 27. De 
  Off.. II., 21; In Vern. IV. 25. 
       4. Many such tribunals were afterwards established, such as Quaestiones 
  de majestate, de ambitu, de peculatu, de vi, de sodalitiis, &c. Each was 
  composed of a certain number of judges taken from the senators, and presided 
  over by a praetor, although he might delegate his authority to a public 
  officer, who was called judex quaestionis. These tribunals continued a year 
  only; for the meaning of the word perpetuus is (non interruptus,) not 
  interrupted during the term of its appointed duration. 
       5. The establishment of these quaestiones, deprived the comitia of 
  their criminal jurisdiction, except the crime of treason -- they were in 
  fact the depositories of the judicial power during the sixth and seventh 
  centuries of the Roman republic, the last of which was remarkable for civil 
  dissentions, and replete with great public, transactions. Without some 
  knowledge of the constitution of the Quaestio perpetua, it is impossible to 
  understand the forensic speeches of Cicero, or even the political history of 
  that age. But when Julius Caesar, as dictator, sat for the trial of 
  Ligarius, the ancient constitution of the republic was in fact destroyed, 
  and the criminal tribunals, which had existed in more or less vigor and 
  purity until then, existed no longer but in name. Under Augustus, the 
  concentration of the triple power of the consuls, pro-consuls and tribunes, 
  in his person transferred to him as of course, all judicial powers and 
  authorities.