The Founding Fathers looked back to the Romans and the Greeks for inspiration on how to structure the government of the new country. Perhaps the greatest impact from the Romans was the idea of a senate.The senate ruled Rome outright for 500 years, and maintained significant influence even once Rome had become an empire.Whereas lawyers in the United States and England rely on precedents of past cases to argue the law, lawyers in ancient Rome, as well as most other countries today, would instead focus on codes of law. This meant that law cases could have the potential to sound more like people arguing over a rulebook than an eloquent argument we imagine our lawyers produce, but that is how law is practiced in much of the world today.