In criminal procedure presumably all capital causes, and in civil procedure those more difficult cases which presumed an independent action on the part of the directing magistrate, were reserved for the authorities and jurymen of the capital, and the Italian municipal courts were restricted to the minor and less complicated lawsuits, or to those which were very urgent.
Rise of the -Municipium- The origin of this Italian municipal system has not been recorded by tradition.

It is probable that its germs may be traced to exceptional regulations for the great burgess-colonies, which were founded at the end of the sixth century;( 43) at least several, in themselves indifferent, formal differences between burgess-colonies and burgess--municipia- tend to show that the new burgess-colony, which at that time practically took the place of the Latin, had originally a better position in state-law than the far older burgess- -municipium-, and the advantage doubtless can only have consisted in a municipal constitution approximating to the Latin, such as afterwards belonged to all burgess-colonies and burgess--municipia-.

The new organization is first distinctly demonstrable for the revolutionary colony of Capua;( 44) and it admits of no doubt that it was first fully applied, when all the hitherto sovereign towns of Italy had to be organized, in consequence of the Social war, as burgess- communities.

Whether it was the Julian law, or the censors of 668, or Sulla, that first arranged the details, cannot be determined: the entrusting of the censorial functions to the -duumviri- seems indeed to have been introduced after the analogy of the Sullan ordinance superseding the censorship, but may be equally well referred to the oldest Latin constitution to which also the censorship was unknown.

In any case this municipal constitution-- inserted in, and subordinate to, the state proper--is one of the most remarkable and momentous products of the Sullan period, and of the life of the Roman state generally.