quaestio

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.