The installation of an emperor made possible the evolution of administrative structures and a centrally directed foreign and military policy appropriate to the government of a large empire. These gains were made at a cost of the destruction of the traditional forms of political life and the reordering and control of the social hierarchy at all levels.

In law, the emperor devised new jurisdictions dependent on himself, created law, and empowered select jurisconsults, who were increasingly professionals of non-aristocratic background, to issue authoritative legal judgements and interpretations – with the necessary consequence that the courts, judicial procedures, and legislative organs inherited from the Republic went into a slow decline.