The history of Roman Law can be divided into three systems of procedure: that of legis actiones, the formulary system, and cognitio extraordinarem. The periods in which these systems were in use overlapped one another and did not have definitive breaks, but it can be stated that the legis actio system prevailed from the time of the XII Tables (c. 450 BC) until about the end of the 2nd century BC, that the formulary procedure was primarily used from the last century of the Republic until the end of the classical period (c. AD 200), and that of cognitio extraordinarem was in use in post-classical times. Again, these dates are meant as a tool to help understand the types of procedure in use, not as a rigid boundary where one system stopped and another began.

The remarkable aspect of a trial of an action under the legis actio procedure (and also later under the formulary system) was characterized by the division of the proceedings into two stages, the first of which took place before a magistrate, under whose supervision all the preliminaries were arranged, the second, in which the issue was actually decided, was held before a judge. The magistrate in question taking part in the preliminary stage was typically the Consul or military tribune, almost exclusively the Praetor upon the creation of this office. The judge was neither a magistrate nor a private lawyer, but an individual agreed upon by both parties.

Business oligarch is a near-synonym of the term "business magnate", borrowed by the English speaking and western media from Russian parlance to describe the huge, fast-acquired wealth of some businessmen of the former Soviet republics (mostly Russia and Ukraine) during privatization in Russia and other post-Soviet states in 1990s. Businessmen with great wealth from these countries, were commonly labelled (simply) "oligarchs" in Russian regardless of whether they had real political power, as the term "oligarch" would imply.

The Russian oligarchs are business entrepreneurs who started under Mikhail Gorbachev during his period of market liberalization.

By the end of the Soviet era and during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, many Russian businessmen imported or smuggled goods such as personal computers and jeans into the country and sold them, often on the black market, for a hefty profit.

During the 1990s, once Boris Yeltsin took office, the oligarchs emerged as well-connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and got rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt, but democratically elected, government of Russia during the state's transition to a market-based economy.

Daryl Robert Williams AM QC (born 21 August 1942), Australian politician, was a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives from March 1993 to October 2004, representing the Division of Tangney, Western Australia.

He was born in East Fremantle, Western Australia, and was educated at the University of Western Australia and Wadham College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar in 1965.

In 1968, Williams started work as a barrister. In 1971, he became counsel for the Asian Development Bank. However, four years later, he returned to practicing law on his own. He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1982, and became a Member of the Order of Australia in 1989. Williams continued to practice law until his election to Parliament in 1993.

Williams was briefly a member of the Opposition Shadow Ministry in 1994, serving as Shadow Attorney-General and Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader of the Opposition on Constitutional Reform.

In 1996, when the Liberals won office, he was appointed to the Cabinet as Attorney-General. He served in this capacity until 2003. Williams was also Minister for Justice for a period in 1996–97. He had also attended the 1998 Constitutional Convention as a parliamentary delegate.