(ii.) _Jurisdiction._—If we turn from the legislative to the judicial sphere, we find the same theoretical assertion of a dual control. But it is complicated in this instance by the fact that the Senate is not the sole representative of the Republican side of the administration. The state still asserts itself through old organs such as the praetors and the _judices_, while it has acquired a new organ in the joint activity of consuls and Senate. In a sphere parallel to theirs the Princeps works, sometimes exercising a jurisdiction that is all his own, at other times infringing on their powers, but always occupying a position that exhibits him to the provincial mind as the highest court in the Roman world. The jurisdiction of these several courts must be treated in its separate aspects of civil and criminal, of jurisdiction in the first instance and by way of appeal. The power of reversing sentences and the right to pardon must also be considered. The civil jurisdiction of the Republic, with its division into _jus_ and _judicium_, continued during the greater part of the period of the Principate, and the praetor still gave his legal rulings in the shape of a formula which he submitted to a _judex_. But these _judicia ordinaria_ tended gradually to be replaced by the personal cognisance (_cognitio_) of the magistrate, which, exercised on a limited scale by the praetor during the Republic, became a feature of the Emperor’s own jurisdiction from the very beginning of the Principate, and was soon extended to provincial governors and to his great delegates, the praefects. This jurisdiction was described as _extra ordinem_, and, like the other form, it admitted of a distinction between magistrate and _judex_. But the new _judex extra ordinem datus_[1820] is wholly different in character from the _judex ordinarius_ of the older form of process. The new procedure does not admit the distinction between _jus_ and _judicium_; the _judex_ is a true delegate, is appointed without a _formula_, and decides on the law as well as on the facts of the case. The sphere of the _cognitio_ of the Princeps was probably unlimited in theory, and may have been conferred on the first Emperor by statute.[1821] It was a voluntary jurisdiction which any one might request and which the Emperor might refuse. In case of such refusal the case was taken by the praetor. The early Principes, however, showed an unwillingness to interfere with the common-law jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and confined their attention to cases of equity, such as those springing from matters of trust (_fidei commissum_) and guardianship (_tutela_). But the number even of these cases soon became too vast for the cognisance of the Emperor and his occasional delegates, and we have seen how special praetors were successively appointed to share in this equitable jurisdiction.[1822]