The judicial cases in which the whole burgesses decided on appeal from the judgment of the magistrate were, down to the time of Sulla, placed in the hands primarily of the tribunes of the people, secondarily of the aediles, inasmuch as all the processes, through which a person entrusted with an office or commission by the community was brought to answer for his conduct of its affairs, whether they involved life and limb or money-fines, had to be in the first instance dealt with by the tribunes of the people, and all the other processes in which ultimately the people decided, were in the first instance adjudicated on, in the second presided over, by the curule or plebeian aediles.

Sulla, if he did not directly abolish the tribunician process of calling to account, yet made it dependent, just like the initiative of the tribunes in legislation, on the previous consent of the senate, and presumably also limited in like manner the aedilician penal procedure.

On the other hand he enlarged the jurisdiction of the jury courts.

There existed at that time two sorts of procedure before jurymen.

The ordinary procedure, which was applicable in all cases adapted according to our view for a criminal or civil process with the exception of crimes immediately directed against the state, consisted in this, that one of the two praetors of the capital technically adjusted the cause and a juryman (-iudex-) nominated by him decided it on the basis of this adjustment.
The extraordinary jury-procedure again was applicable in particular civil or criminal cases of importance, for which, instead of the single juryman, a special jury-court had been appointed by special laws.