While Roman-Dutch law was superseded by Napoleonic codal law in the Netherlands proper as early as the beginning of the 19th century, the legal practices and principles of the Roman-Dutch system are still applied actively and passively by the courts in countries that were part of the Dutch colonial empire, or countries which are influenced by former Dutch colonies: Guyana, South Africa (and its neighbours Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), and Zimbabwe), Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Suriname, and the formerly Indonesian-occupied East Timor.
[1] It also had some minor impact on the laws of the American state of New York,[2] especially in introducing the office of Prosecutor (schout-fiscaal).
The Breviary of Alaric and the Lex Gundobada Romana are two of the several hybrid Romano-Germanic law codes that incorporated much Roman legal material.
[citation needed] Interest in the doctrines of Byzantine lawyers came when—around the year a.d. 1070—a copy of the Digest of Emperor Justinian I found its way into northern Italy.
Courts gradually applied Byzantine law—as taught in Bologna (and soon elsewhere)—first as law in subsidium to be applied when there was no local statute or custom in point, and later because judicial officers (judges, magistrates, assessors) felt that its refined legal concepts were more apt to solve complex cases than the customary laws of western and central Europe.
The resulting mixture was predominantly Roman, but it contained some features which were characteristically Dutch: this hybrid is known as Roman-Dutch law.
On the other hand, in Guyana, the Roman-Dutch legal principles are still influential in the landlaw, for example the terms movable and immovable objects as opposed to personal and real property.