Many newer studies from 1971 onwards "support the interpretation of [Sulla's] reform programme as a new republic rather than a restoration". The reforms "were dressed up as a return to traditional Roman practice [but] many were nothing of the sort"; "Sulla was definitely not trying to 'turn back the clock', let alone to any particular period in Roman history". The rigidly legalised constitution, based on a system of laws enforced by senatorial courts, that Sulla put forward "did not correspond to the Roman experience of a traditional republic... based on deliberation in the senate, debate in front of the people, and on elaborate rituals of compromise and consensus building in both settings". It was also not an ideologically consistent set of reforms, acting ad hoc to address various different issues identified in the state.
Senate and the assembly Sulla expanded the number of senators from some three hundred (before the civil war) to as many as six hundred, more than doubling its size, with new senators recruited from the ranks of the
equites and the nobles of Italian towns. Before his expansion, the senate's ranks were skeletally thin: of former consuls, a mere five were known to be alive and able to participate in 82. He also increased the number of
quaestores elected per year from eight to twenty and making induction to the senate automatic with the holding of the quaestorship; this meant that many of the new senators would likely never hold higher office and existed rather to serve as jurors in a large system of permanent jury courts. There would be at least seven courts, each under a praetor, with large juries to minimise the impact of bribery. In the past, from the time of the Gracchi onwards, these courts had been staffed by the equestrians, but the juries would be picked from members of the senatorial class. The consequences of Sulla's changes to the senate resulted in a "two-tiered... system in which the inner circle of the powerful opinion makers... were separated from those who spent their lives as jurors". The leading senators holding magistracies also were to spend their year in office in the capital rather than commanding troops abroad, making senate debates far more formal and providing an environment in which the consuls could repeatedly clash. The office of praetor also changed, put in charge of the courts during their magistracy before being sent to govern a province immediately afterwards. In the past, the senate had been composed of people recognised by the censors for their achievements in high office or of personal virtue; Sulla's lacked this, being composed mainly of his supporters and the winners of relatively undiscriminating elections to the quaestorship. Sulla also, according to Appian, required that laws be brought before the centuries rather than the tribes and that they first receive the approval of the senate. The requirement to bring laws before the centuries does not seem to have survived even Sulla's dictatorship, as he brought a law on the quaestorship before the tribes. Sulla settled instead on divesting the tribunes of their legislative initiative and allowing curule magistrates to call the tribes to hear legislative proposals. Consular legislation was rare before the Sulla's reforms, with most legislation being put by tribunes, but after Sulla, it became common to have consuls and praetors introduce bills before the people.
Magistracies Sulla made the traditional order in which offices were held () a legal requirement (e.g. to be elected consul, one had to have been praetor) and required a ten-year period between re-election to office with minimum ages to various offices. Among his other changes to elections, he neutered the
plebeian tribunes, turning the office into a dead-end position with little power: their ability to veto public business was removed along with powers to propose legislation. Moreover, anyone elected to the tribunate was thence ineligible to future elected office. Their powers were reduced only to protecting citizens from a magistrate's arbitrary actions. The effects of these changes to the magistracies was profound. Citizens no longer would have tribunes call meetings, give political speeches, or vote on tribunician legislation; however, the process of electing magistrates had little changed, with politicians still campaigning before the people. While the people had not lost their sovereign power to make laws, they instead "were simply called upon to ratify laws that had already been approved by the senate and that were proposed by the highest magistrates". Limits also were placed on the discretion of governors in the field. Instead of appointing them to wage a campaign of some sort, Sulla required them to go to a province, defined as specific geographic area, and then stay there without deviating from instructions provided by the senate until relieved. The penalties for breaking these laws (cf Caesar) were also severe.
Other In the realm of religion, Sulla repealed the
lex Domitia de sacerdotiis of 104, which placed the election of priests into the hands of the people, returning to the older system of co-option. The
Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline hill, which had burnt down in 83, was rebuilt, named after a close ally of Sulla's,
Quintus Lutatius Catulus. He also abolished the grain dole and Roman state's subsidies to control food prices in the city. He also, as dictator, expanded Rome's sacred city boundary, the
pomerium. ==Fate of the Sullan constitution==