It represented the legal ethics of a society on most of its sides brutally and crassly individualistic.

That that society had come to an end instead of evolving to its natural conclusion--a developed capitalistic individualism such as exists to-day--was due to the weakness of its economic basis, owing to the limitation at that time of man's power over Nature, which deprived it of recuperative and defensive force, thereby leaving it a prey not only to internal influences of decay but also to violent destructive forces from without.

Nevertheless, it left a legacy of a ready-made legal system to serve as an implement for the first occasion when economic conditions should be once more ready for progress to resume the course of individualistic development, abruptly brought to an end by the fall of ancient civilization as crystallized in the Roman Empire.
The popular courts of the village, of the mark, and of the town, which had existed up to the beginning of the sixteenth century with all their ancient functions, were extremely democratic in character.

Cases were decided on their merits, in accordance with local custom, by a body of jurymen chosen from among the freemen of the district, to whom the presiding functionaries, most of whom were also of popular selection, were little more than assessors.

The technicalities of a cut-and-dried system were unknown.