法律渊源词义考

The phrase "source of law" originated from the phrase" fons juris” in Roman law. In ancient Ureece there was no such conception as source of law, only an early idea of the origin of law, mainly because the legal profession had not come into existence. The Roman concept of fons juris was born from legal practice, which originally meant the forum where judges selected and found rules to resolve disputes. In the Middle Ages Western Europeans inherited some of the ideas of Roman f ons juris and developed them in their own way. In the Modern times, the concept of the source of law was changed because the statute law became the only form of law as the result of the rise of rationalism, the establishment of nation states and the separation of powers. The modern codification movement only changed the forms of the source of law, not the concept of the source of law. To define the concept of the source of law, one needs to understand exactly what is meant by "law" and“source" in the phrase‘fons j uris’.In short, the source of law is a gathering of diversified norms, from which judges find what they need to decide cases.