What is the importance of latin maxims?

I don't know... to help you memorize legal tenets I guess.. But I guess it's more on the fact that these maxims are what modern laws are based upon.. so in constructing these modern laws, one will always have to consider the literal and original meaning of these latin maxims..

I agree with uber2002.

Sometimes, the funny thing in construction of these latin maxims is they forget the spirit of the maxim. They then tend to interpret it literally.

Further, Latin is a dead language, we have no concrete way of determining the actual meaning of some of the Latin maxims.