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There are few more dramatic periods of transition than those that follow a period of civil conflict. If the conflict has been prolonged, there is a strong possibility that both sides will have acted to ensured the administration of law in any territories that they may control. This presents the victorious regime with somewhat of a problem: to what extent should the legal and administrative acts of their defeated opponents be treated as valid? Recognising the legal actions of the opposition would thus involve a more or less explicit recognition of their legitimacy While from a practical standpoint, the interests of stability and continuity may seem to favour letting such administrative or legal actions stand. However, in such circumstances competing political considerations may require that such legal actions be considered invalid to maintain the illusion that the usurping regime had been illegitimate ab initio. In examining this question, this paper uses a particularly long lens - looking back in time, in fact, some fifteen-hundred years to the fourth century of the Common Era, verging on the last gasp of the western Roman Empire. |
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