Several Latin law codes of the Germanic peoples written in the Early Middle Ages (also known as leges barbarorum "laws of the barbarians") survive, dating to between the 5th and 9th centuries. They are influenced by Roman law, ecclesiastical law, and earlier tribal customs.

Germanic law was codified in writing under the influence of Roman law; previously it was held in the memory of designated individuals who acted as judges in confrontations and meted out justice according to customary rote, based on careful memorization of precedent. Among the Franks they were called rachimburgs. "Living libraries, they were law incarnate, unpredictable and terrifying." When justice is oral, the judicial act is personal and subjective. Power, whose origins were at once magical, divine and military, as Michel Rouche has pointed out, was exercised jointly by the "throne-worthy" elected king and his free warrior companions. Oral law sufficed as long as the warband was not settled in one place. Germanic law made no provisions for the public welfare, the res publica of Romans