Constitutional laws. Greek philosophers had, however, formulated a theory of a Law of Nature which was morally, above the laws actually enforced. In later stages of Roman Law, Roman jurists also, saturated with Greek notions of an ethically superior law of Nature, said that the institution of slavery, which gave the owner of a slave theoretically absolute powers of life and death over the slave, just like the powers of a pater-familias over his children, was contrary to jus naturale although it was recognised by just gentium, the laws of then civilised world. Aristotle, in his analysis of forms of Government, had emphasized the importance of the Constitution of a State as a test or determinant of sovereign power in the State. And, Roman jurists, had indirectly cleared the path for the rise of modern legalism and constitutionalism by rescuing law itself from the clutches of a superstitious reverence for customs, surrounded with ceremonial and ritualistic observances and cumbersome justice defeating formalism, through fiction and equity, and forged a secular and scientific weapon of socio-economic transformation. All this was very useful in preparing for an age in which secular law could displace religion as the ‘‘control of controls’’ (see Julius Stone’s ‘‘Province and Function of Law,’’ 1961 Edn. pp. 754, 767). 531. Romans not only clarified basic notions but developed a whole armoury of new forms in which law could be declared or made, Lex, Plebiscitum, Magistratuum Edicta, Senatusconsulta, Responsa Prudentium, Principum Placita. The last mentioned consisted of orders of Roman Emperors which were of various kinds, some of general application to cases of particular kinds and others for particular individual cases: Edicta, Decreta, Mandata, Rescripta. They had the ‘‘force of law’’ or ‘‘Lex’’ which could be roughly equated with our statutory law. ‘‘Decreta’’ were issued as decisions on individual disputes, in exercise of the Emperor’s power ‘‘under’’ the authority of ‘‘Lex de Imperio’’, although ‘‘in the classical period it was firmly established that what the Emperior ordained had the force of law’’ (See R.W. league on Roman Law, Edn. 1961 p. 32). The point to note is that even in the embryonic stages of Government through legislation lawmaking and decision of individual cases are found distinctly separate. 532. After the break-up of the Roman Empire, there were attempts in medieval Europe, both by the Church and the Kings, to develop spiritual and temporal means for checking wrong and oppression. Quests for the superior or a sovereign power and its theoretical justifications by both ecclesiastical and lay thinkers were parts of an attempt to meet this need. The claims of those who, as vicars of God on earth, sought to meddle with mundane and temporal affairs and acquire even political power and influence were, after a struggle for power, which took different forms in different countries, finally defeated by European Kings with the aid of their subjects. Indeed, these Kings tries to snatch, and, not without success, to wear spiritual crowns which the role of ‘‘defenders of the faith’’ carried with them so as to surround themselves with auras of divinity. 533. The theory of a legally sovereign unquestionable authority of the King, based on physical might and victory in battle, appears to have been