Lex animata
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lex animata (the law animate) is a Latin term for the law being embodied in a living entity, usually the sovereign by the grace of God. In that sense a king could be lex animata, a living, breathing law. The equivalent Greek term, used in the Byzantine Empire, is νόμος ἔμψυχος, nómos émpsychos.[1]
Originating in Hellenistic philosophy, the identification of the Roman sovereign as nomos empsychos was established in law by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in his Novellae Constitutiones, and imported from there into Western civil law by the medieval glossators. Over time, the label was extended from the emperor to the various European kings. In some formulations, the argument went both ways: the king was law, but he could not do but as the law instructed.[2]