The Reception in Scotland.A full history of the Reception in Scotland seems to be a desideratum. But see Goudy,Fate of Roman Law(Inaugural Lecture), 1894; also J. M. Irvine,Roman LawinGreen’s Encyclopædia of the Law of Scotland. Whether at any time the Reception in Scotland ran the length that it ran in Germany may be doubted; but the influence exercised by English example since 1603 would deserve the historian’s consideration. Even if this influence went no further than the establishment of the habit of finding ‘authority’ in decided cases, it would be of great importance. Where such a habit is established in practice and sanctioned by theory, any return to the pure text, such as that which was preached in Germany by ‘the historical school,’ would be impossible. Also it may be suggested that the Roman law which played upon the law of Scotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not always very Roman, but was strongly dashed with ‘Natural Law.’ For instance, if in Scotland the firm of partners is a ‘legal person,’ this is not due to the influence of Roman law as it is now understood by famous expositors, or as it was understood in the middle ages. Also (to take another example) it seems impossible to get the Scotch ‘trust’ out of Romanlaw by any fair process. The suggestion that it is ‘a contract made up of the two nominate contracts of deposit and mandate’ seems a desperate effort to romanize what is not Roman.The persistence of Lombard law.[56]Pertile,Storia del diritto italiano, ed. 2, vol.II.(2), p. 69: ‘Laonde può dirsi che l’abrogazione definitiva ed espressa della legislazione longobardica nel regno di Napoli non abbia avuto luogo se non al principio del nostro secolo, sotto Giuseppe Bonaparte, al momento in cui vennero publicati colà i codici francesi.’ On p. 65 will be found some of the opprobrious phrases that the civilians applied to Lombard law:‘nec meretur ius Lombardorum lex appellari sed faex’: ‘non sine ratione dominus Andreas de Isernia vocat leges illas ius asininum.’French law in the universities.[57]Esmein,Histoire du droit français, ed. 2, p. 757: ‘C’est seulement en 1679 que l’enseignement du droit français reçut une place bien modeste dans les universités.’ Viollet,Histoire du droit civil français, p. 217: ‘Lorsqu’en 1679, Louis XIV. érigea à la faculté de Paris une chaire de droit français et une chaire de droit romain, le premier professeur de droit français, Fr. de Launay, commenta lesInstitutesde Loisel, qui prirent ainsi une situation quasi-officielle à côté desInstitutesde Justinien.’ Brissaud,Histoire du droit français, p. 237: ‘Le latin avait été jusque-là la langue de l’école. Le premier professeur en droit français à Paris, de Launay, fit son cours en langue française.’German law in the universities.[58]Siegel,Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ed. 3, p. 152: ‘Den ersten und zugleich entscheidenden Schritt in dieser Richtung that Georg Beyer, welcher… zunächst durch einen Zufall veranlasst wurde, an der Wittenberger Universität, wohin er als Pandektist berufen worden war, 1707 eine Vorlesung über dasius germanicumanzukündigen und zu halten.’Professorships in America.[59]Thayer,The Teaching of English Law at UniversitiesinHarvard Law Review, vol.IX., p. 171: ‘Blackstone’s example was immediately followed here.… In 1779 … a chair of law was founded in Virginia at William and Mary College … and in the same year Isaac Royall of Massachusetts, then a resident in London, made his will, giving property to Harvard College for establishing there that professorship of law which still bears his name.’ The Royall professorship was actually founded in 1815 (Officers and Graduates of Harvard, 1900, p. 24). At Cambridge (England) the Downing professorship was founded in 1800.The Inns of Court.[60]SeeRecords of the Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, 1896 ff.;Calendar of the Records of the Inner Temple, 1896. The records of Gray’s Inn are, so I understand, to be published. See also Philip A. Smith,History of Education for the English Bar, 1860; Joseph Walton,Early History of Legal Studies in England, 1900, read at a meeting of the American Bar Association in 1899. In foreign countries there were gilds or fraternitiesof lawyers. Thus in Paris theavocatsandprocureursabout the middle of the fourteenth century formed a fraternity of St Nicholas: ‘dont le chef porte le bâton ou bannière (de là le nom de bâtonnier)’: Brissaud,Histoire du droit français, p. 898. But, though a certain care for the education of apprentices was a natural function of the medieval craft-gild, I cannot find that elsewhere than in England fraternities of legal practitioners took upon themselves to educate students and to give what in effect were degrees, and degrees which admitted to practice in the courts. R. Delachenal,Histoire des avocats au parlement de Paris(Paris, 1885), says that, though not proved, it is probable that already in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries theavocathad to be eitherlicencié en loisorlicencié en décret: in other words, a legal degree given by an university was necessary for the intending practitioner. As regards the England of the same age two interesting questions might be asked. Was there any considerable number of doctors or bachelors of law who were not clergymen? Had the English judge or the English barrister usually been at an university? I am inclined to think that a negative answer should be given to the first question and perhaps to the second also. Apparently Littleton (to take one example) is not claimed by Oxford or Cambridge.Sir T. Smith and the Inns of Court.[61]Smith,Inaugural Oration,MS.Baker,XXXVII.409 (Camb. Univ. Lib.): ‘… At vero nostrates,et Londinenses iurisconsulti, quibuscum disputare, cum ruri sim et extra academiam, non illibenter soleo, qui barbaras tantum et semigallicas nostras leges inspexerint, homines ab omnibus suis humanioribus disciplinis et hac academiae nostrae instructione semotissimi, etiam cum quid e philosophia, theologiave depromptum in quaestione ponatur, Deus bone! quam apte, quamque explicate singula resumunt, quanta cum facilitate et copia, quantaque cum gratia et venustate, vel confirmant sua, vel refellunt aliena! Certe nec dialecticae vim multum in eis desideres, nec eloquentiae splendorem. Eorum oratio est Anglicana quidem, sed non sordida, non inquinata, non trivialis, gravis nonnunquam et copiosa, saepe urbana et faceta, non destituta similitudinum et exemplorum copia, lenis et aequabilis, et pleno velut alveo fluens, nusquam impedita. Quae res tantam mihi eorum hominum admirationem concitavit, ut aliquandiu vehementer optarim, secessionem aliquam ab ista academia facere et Londinum concedere, ut eos in suis ipsis scholis ac circulis disputantes audirem, quod an sim facturus aliquando, cum feriae longae, et quasi solenne iusticium, nostris praelectionibus indicatur, haud equidem pro certo affirmaverim.’Multiplication of English law books.[62]Soule,Year Book Bibliography, inHarvard Law Review, vol.XIV., p. 564: ‘In 1553 the field of Year-Book publication was entered by Richard Tottell, who for thirty-eight years occupied it so fully as to admit no rival. There are about 225known editions of separate Years or groups of Years which bear his imprint or can be surely attributed to his press.… He is pre-eminentlythepublisher of Year Books, and he so completely put them ‘in print’ and so cheapened their price that he evidently made them a popular and profitable literature.’In 1550 an English lawyer’s library of printed books might apparently have comprised (besides some Statutes and Year Books) Littleton’s Tenures, The Old Tenures, Statham’s Abridgement, Fitzherbert’s Abridgement, Liber Intrationum, The Old Natura Brevium, perhaps a Registrum Brevium (if that book, printed in 1531, was published before 1553), Institutions or principal grounds etc. [1544], Carta feodi simplicis, [Phaer’s] New book of presidentes, Diversite de courts, Novae Narrationes, Articuli ad novas narrationes, Modus tenendi curiam baronis, Modus tenendi unum hundredum, Fitzherbert’s Justice of the Peace, Perkins’s Profitable Book, Britton, Doctor and Student. A great part of what was put into print was of medieval origin and had been current in manuscript. In 1600 the following might have been added: Glanvill, Bracton, Fitzherbert’s Natura Brevium, Broke’s Abridgement, Broke’s New Cases, Rastell’s Entries, Staundford’s Prerogative and Pleas of the Crown, Crompton’s Justice of the Peace, Crompton’s Authority of Courts, West’s Symbolæography, Theloall’s Digest, Smith’s Commonwealth, Lambard’s Archaionomia and Eirenarcha, Fulbecke’s Direction or Preparativeto the Study of the Law [1600], Plowden’s Commentaries, Dyer’s Reports and the first volume of Coke’s Reports [1600]. This represents a great advance. Already Fulbecke in his curious book (which was reprinted as still useful in 1829) attempts a review of English legal literature: a critical estimate of Dyer, Plowden, Staundford, Perkins and other writers. Lambard’s revelation of the Anglo-Saxon laws was not unimportant, for a basis was thus laid for national boasts; and, but for the publication of Glanvill, Bracton and Britton, the work that was done by Coke would have been impossible.Were any books about Roman law printed in England before 1600, except a few of Gentili’s?The Court of Requests.[63]See Mr Leadam’s Introduction toSelect Pleas in the Court of Requests(Seld. Soc.) andDict. Nat. Biog.s.n. Caesar, Sir Julius.Cowell’s ‘Interpreter.’[64]See Gardiner,Hist. England, 1603-1642, vol.II., pp. 66-68; E. C. Clark,Cambridge Legal Studies, pp. 74-75. Cowell’sInstitutiones(less known than theInterpreter) are an attempt, ‘in the main very able,’ so Dr Clark says, to bring English materials under Roman rubrics. It is a book which might have played a part in a Reception; but it came too late.Roman-Dutch law.[65]There can now be few, if any, countries outside the British Empire in which a rule of law is enforced because it is (or is deemed to be) a rule of Romanlaw. SeeGalliersv.Rycroft[1901] A. C. 130, for a recent discussion before the Judicial Committee (on an appeal from Natal) of the import of a passage in the Digest. Are there many lands in which so much respect would be paid by a tribunal and for practical purposes to a response of Papinian’s? I think not.First Charter of Virginia.[66]Macdonald,Select Charters, 1899, p. 1: ‘The first draft of the charter … was probably drawn by Sir John Popham … but the final form was the work of Sir Edward Coke, attorney general, and Sir John Dodderidge, solicitor general.’First Assembly in Virginia.[67]Doyle,The English in America, vol.I., p. 211: ‘On the 30th of July, 1619, the first Assembly met in the little church at Jamestown. A full report of its proceedings still exists in the English Record Office (Colonial Papers, July 30, 1619).’ An abstract is printed inCalendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 22.The tenure of Maryland.[68]Charter of Maryland, 1632, Macdonald,Select Charters, p. 53. In 1620 the grant to the Council of New England (Ibid., p. 23) referred to the manor of East Greenwich and reserved by way of rent a fifth part of the ore of gold and silver. The grant of Carolina (Ibid., p. 121) reserved a rent of twenty marks and a fourth of the ore. The grant of New Netherlands to the duke of York (Ibid., p. 136) reserved a rent of forty beaver skins, if demanded. The grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn speaksof the Castle of Windsor and reserves two beaver skins and a fifth of the gold and silver ore (Ibid., p. 185). Georgia was holden as of the honour of Hampton Court in the county of Middlesex at a rent of four shillings for every hundred acres that should be settled (Ibid., p. 242).The tenure of Bombay.[69]Charter of 1669 printed amongCharters granted to the East India Company(no date or publisher’s name): ‘to be holden of us, our heirs and successors as of the manor of East Greenwich in the county of Kent, in free and common soccage and not in capite nor by knight’s service, yielding and paying therefor to us, our heirs and successors at the Custom House, London, the rent or sum of ten pounds of lawful money of England in gold on the thirtieth day of September yearly for ever.’The tenure of Prince Rupert’s land.[70]Charter of 1670 incorporating the Hudson’s Bay Company, printed by Beckles Wilson,The Great Company, vol.II., pp. 318, 327: ‘yielding and paying yearly to us … two elks and two black beavers, whensoever and as often as we our heirs and successors shall happen to enter into the said countries, territories and regions hereby granted.’Kent and Blackstone.[71]Thayer,The Teaching of English Law at UniversitiesinHarvard Law Review, vol.IX., p. 170: ‘“I retired to a country village,” Chancellor Kent tells us in speaking of the breaking up of Yale College by the war, where he was a student in 1779, “and, finding Blackstone’s Commentaries, I read thefour volumes.… The work inspired me at the age of fifteen with awe, and I fondly determined to be a lawyer.” … “There is abundant evidence,” if we may rely upon the authority of Dr Hammond, whose language I quote, “of the immediate absorption of nearly twenty-five hundred copies of the Commentaries in the thirteen colonies before the Declaration of Independence.”’Marshall and Blackstone.[72]Thayer,John Marshall, 1901, p. 6: ‘When Marshall was about eighteen years old he began to study Blackstone.… He seems to have found a copy of Blackstone in his father’s house.… Just now the first American edition was out (Philadelphia, 1771-2), in which the list of subscribers, headed by the name of “John Adams, barrister at law, Boston,” had also that of “Captain Thomas Marshall, Clerk of Dunmore County.”’Roman law in America.[73]It may be interesting to notice that in 1856, and perhaps even in 1871, Sir H. Maine believed that the Code of Louisiana (‘of all republications of Roman law the one which appears to us the clearest, the fullest, the most philosophical and the best adapted to the exigencies of modern society’) had a grand destiny before it in the United States. ‘Now it is this code, and not the Common Law of England which the newest American States are taking for the substratum of their laws.… The Roman law is, therefore, fast becoming the lingua franca of universal jurisprudence.’ (Maine,Roman Law and Legal Education, 1856, reprinted inVillageCommunities, ed. 3, pp. 360-1.) Nowadays this hope or fear of a Reception of Roman law in the United States seems, so I am given to understand, quite unfounded. See e.g. J. F. Dillon,Laws and Jurisprudence of England and America, 1894, p. 155: ‘the common law [in distinction from the Roman or civil law] is the basis of the laws of every State and Territory of the Union, with comparatively unimportant and gradually waning exceptions.’Ihering and the litigious Englishman.[74]Ihering,Der Kampf um’s Recht, ed. 10, pp. 45, 69: ‘Ich habe bereits oben das Beispiel des kampflustigen Engländers angeführt, und ich kann hier nur wiederholen, was ich dort gesagt: in dem Gulden, um den er hartnäckig streitet, steckt die politische Entwicklung Englands. Einem Volke, bei dem es allgemeine Uebung ist, dass Jeder auch im Kleinen und Kleinsten sein Recht tapfer behauptet, wird Niemand wagen, das Höchste, was es hat, zu entreissen, und es ist daher kein Zufall, dass dasselbe Volk des Alterthums, welches im Innern die höchste politische Entwicklung und nach Aussen hin die grösste Kraftentfaltung aufzuweisen hat, das römische, zugleich das ausgebildetste Privatrecht besass.’Codes in English Colonies.[75]Thus in particular Queensland in 1899 enacted a criminal code of 707 sections. SeeJournal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, New Ser., vol.VI., pp. 555-560: ‘The precedents utilised in framing the Code were the [in England abortive] draft English codes of 1879 and 1880, the Italian PenalCode of 1888, and the Penal Code of the State of New York.’ See also Ilbert,Legislative Methods, p. 155.German Civil Code.[76]Some information in English about the new German code will be found in articles by Mr E. Schuster,Law Quarterly Review, vol.XII., p. 17, andJournal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, Old Series, vol.I., p. 191. Despite the careful exclusion of almost all words derived from the Latin (exceptHypothek, which happens to be Greek), the new law book may look Roman to an Englishman; but then it does not look Roman to Germans. The following sentences are taken from a speech delivered in the Reichstag (Mugdan,Materialien zum bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch, vol.I., pp. 876-7): ‘In dieser Beziehung ist vor Allem der Vorwurf gegen den Entwurf erhoben, er enthalte materiell kein deutsches Recht.… Selten ist ein Vorwurf unbegründeter gewesen.… Das Sachenrecht ist von A bis Z durchaus deutsches Recht.… Was dann den Begriff des Besitzes betrifft, von der ganzen römischen Besitztheorie ist nichts übrig geblieben.… Der allgemeine Theil des Obligationenrechtes ist natürlich römischen Ursprunges.… Kommen wir aber zu den einzelnen speziellen Rechtsgeschäften, so treffen wir auch da sofort wieder deutsches Recht.… Auch das Familienrecht ist durchaus deutschrechtlich.… Dann ist das Erbrecht durch und durch deutschrechtlichen Ursprunges.…’ The supposition that codification means romanizationis baseless; it may mean deromanization. But the great lesson to be learnt by Englishmen from the German Code is that a democratically elected assembly, which is for many purposes divided into bitterly contending fractions, can be induced to show a wonderful forbearance when uniformity of law is to be attained.Unity of law.[77]Molinaeus (Charles Du Moulin),Oratio de concordia et unione consuetudinum Franciae, inOpera(1681), vol.II., p. 691: ‘Mihi quoque videtur nihil aptius, nihil efficacius ad plures provincias sub eodem imperio retinendas et fovendas, nec fortius nec honestius vinculum quam communio et conformitas eorundem morum legumve utilium et aequabilium.’The school at Harvard.[78]The name of Harvard is here mentioned without prejudice to the just claims of any other American university; but theHarvard Law Review, edited by a committee of students, is a journal of which any school might be proud.
The Reception in Scotland.
A full history of the Reception in Scotland seems to be a desideratum. But see Goudy,Fate of Roman Law(Inaugural Lecture), 1894; also J. M. Irvine,Roman LawinGreen’s Encyclopædia of the Law of Scotland. Whether at any time the Reception in Scotland ran the length that it ran in Germany may be doubted; but the influence exercised by English example since 1603 would deserve the historian’s consideration. Even if this influence went no further than the establishment of the habit of finding ‘authority’ in decided cases, it would be of great importance. Where such a habit is established in practice and sanctioned by theory, any return to the pure text, such as that which was preached in Germany by ‘the historical school,’ would be impossible. Also it may be suggested that the Roman law which played upon the law of Scotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not always very Roman, but was strongly dashed with ‘Natural Law.’ For instance, if in Scotland the firm of partners is a ‘legal person,’ this is not due to the influence of Roman law as it is now understood by famous expositors, or as it was understood in the middle ages. Also (to take another example) it seems impossible to get the Scotch ‘trust’ out of Romanlaw by any fair process. The suggestion that it is ‘a contract made up of the two nominate contracts of deposit and mandate’ seems a desperate effort to romanize what is not Roman.
The persistence of Lombard law.
[56]Pertile,Storia del diritto italiano, ed. 2, vol.II.(2), p. 69: ‘Laonde può dirsi che l’abrogazione definitiva ed espressa della legislazione longobardica nel regno di Napoli non abbia avuto luogo se non al principio del nostro secolo, sotto Giuseppe Bonaparte, al momento in cui vennero publicati colà i codici francesi.’ On p. 65 will be found some of the opprobrious phrases that the civilians applied to Lombard law:‘nec meretur ius Lombardorum lex appellari sed faex’: ‘non sine ratione dominus Andreas de Isernia vocat leges illas ius asininum.’
French law in the universities.
[57]Esmein,Histoire du droit français, ed. 2, p. 757: ‘C’est seulement en 1679 que l’enseignement du droit français reçut une place bien modeste dans les universités.’ Viollet,Histoire du droit civil français, p. 217: ‘Lorsqu’en 1679, Louis XIV. érigea à la faculté de Paris une chaire de droit français et une chaire de droit romain, le premier professeur de droit français, Fr. de Launay, commenta lesInstitutesde Loisel, qui prirent ainsi une situation quasi-officielle à côté desInstitutesde Justinien.’ Brissaud,Histoire du droit français, p. 237: ‘Le latin avait été jusque-là la langue de l’école. Le premier professeur en droit français à Paris, de Launay, fit son cours en langue française.’
German law in the universities.
[58]Siegel,Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ed. 3, p. 152: ‘Den ersten und zugleich entscheidenden Schritt in dieser Richtung that Georg Beyer, welcher… zunächst durch einen Zufall veranlasst wurde, an der Wittenberger Universität, wohin er als Pandektist berufen worden war, 1707 eine Vorlesung über dasius germanicumanzukündigen und zu halten.’
Professorships in America.
[59]Thayer,The Teaching of English Law at UniversitiesinHarvard Law Review, vol.IX., p. 171: ‘Blackstone’s example was immediately followed here.… In 1779 … a chair of law was founded in Virginia at William and Mary College … and in the same year Isaac Royall of Massachusetts, then a resident in London, made his will, giving property to Harvard College for establishing there that professorship of law which still bears his name.’ The Royall professorship was actually founded in 1815 (Officers and Graduates of Harvard, 1900, p. 24). At Cambridge (England) the Downing professorship was founded in 1800.
The Inns of Court.
[60]SeeRecords of the Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, 1896 ff.;Calendar of the Records of the Inner Temple, 1896. The records of Gray’s Inn are, so I understand, to be published. See also Philip A. Smith,History of Education for the English Bar, 1860; Joseph Walton,Early History of Legal Studies in England, 1900, read at a meeting of the American Bar Association in 1899. In foreign countries there were gilds or fraternitiesof lawyers. Thus in Paris theavocatsandprocureursabout the middle of the fourteenth century formed a fraternity of St Nicholas: ‘dont le chef porte le bâton ou bannière (de là le nom de bâtonnier)’: Brissaud,Histoire du droit français, p. 898. But, though a certain care for the education of apprentices was a natural function of the medieval craft-gild, I cannot find that elsewhere than in England fraternities of legal practitioners took upon themselves to educate students and to give what in effect were degrees, and degrees which admitted to practice in the courts. R. Delachenal,Histoire des avocats au parlement de Paris(Paris, 1885), says that, though not proved, it is probable that already in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries theavocathad to be eitherlicencié en loisorlicencié en décret: in other words, a legal degree given by an university was necessary for the intending practitioner. As regards the England of the same age two interesting questions might be asked. Was there any considerable number of doctors or bachelors of law who were not clergymen? Had the English judge or the English barrister usually been at an university? I am inclined to think that a negative answer should be given to the first question and perhaps to the second also. Apparently Littleton (to take one example) is not claimed by Oxford or Cambridge.
Sir T. Smith and the Inns of Court.
[61]Smith,Inaugural Oration,MS.Baker,XXXVII.409 (Camb. Univ. Lib.): ‘… At vero nostrates,et Londinenses iurisconsulti, quibuscum disputare, cum ruri sim et extra academiam, non illibenter soleo, qui barbaras tantum et semigallicas nostras leges inspexerint, homines ab omnibus suis humanioribus disciplinis et hac academiae nostrae instructione semotissimi, etiam cum quid e philosophia, theologiave depromptum in quaestione ponatur, Deus bone! quam apte, quamque explicate singula resumunt, quanta cum facilitate et copia, quantaque cum gratia et venustate, vel confirmant sua, vel refellunt aliena! Certe nec dialecticae vim multum in eis desideres, nec eloquentiae splendorem. Eorum oratio est Anglicana quidem, sed non sordida, non inquinata, non trivialis, gravis nonnunquam et copiosa, saepe urbana et faceta, non destituta similitudinum et exemplorum copia, lenis et aequabilis, et pleno velut alveo fluens, nusquam impedita. Quae res tantam mihi eorum hominum admirationem concitavit, ut aliquandiu vehementer optarim, secessionem aliquam ab ista academia facere et Londinum concedere, ut eos in suis ipsis scholis ac circulis disputantes audirem, quod an sim facturus aliquando, cum feriae longae, et quasi solenne iusticium, nostris praelectionibus indicatur, haud equidem pro certo affirmaverim.’
Multiplication of English law books.
[62]Soule,Year Book Bibliography, inHarvard Law Review, vol.XIV., p. 564: ‘In 1553 the field of Year-Book publication was entered by Richard Tottell, who for thirty-eight years occupied it so fully as to admit no rival. There are about 225known editions of separate Years or groups of Years which bear his imprint or can be surely attributed to his press.… He is pre-eminentlythepublisher of Year Books, and he so completely put them ‘in print’ and so cheapened their price that he evidently made them a popular and profitable literature.’
In 1550 an English lawyer’s library of printed books might apparently have comprised (besides some Statutes and Year Books) Littleton’s Tenures, The Old Tenures, Statham’s Abridgement, Fitzherbert’s Abridgement, Liber Intrationum, The Old Natura Brevium, perhaps a Registrum Brevium (if that book, printed in 1531, was published before 1553), Institutions or principal grounds etc. [1544], Carta feodi simplicis, [Phaer’s] New book of presidentes, Diversite de courts, Novae Narrationes, Articuli ad novas narrationes, Modus tenendi curiam baronis, Modus tenendi unum hundredum, Fitzherbert’s Justice of the Peace, Perkins’s Profitable Book, Britton, Doctor and Student. A great part of what was put into print was of medieval origin and had been current in manuscript. In 1600 the following might have been added: Glanvill, Bracton, Fitzherbert’s Natura Brevium, Broke’s Abridgement, Broke’s New Cases, Rastell’s Entries, Staundford’s Prerogative and Pleas of the Crown, Crompton’s Justice of the Peace, Crompton’s Authority of Courts, West’s Symbolæography, Theloall’s Digest, Smith’s Commonwealth, Lambard’s Archaionomia and Eirenarcha, Fulbecke’s Direction or Preparativeto the Study of the Law [1600], Plowden’s Commentaries, Dyer’s Reports and the first volume of Coke’s Reports [1600]. This represents a great advance. Already Fulbecke in his curious book (which was reprinted as still useful in 1829) attempts a review of English legal literature: a critical estimate of Dyer, Plowden, Staundford, Perkins and other writers. Lambard’s revelation of the Anglo-Saxon laws was not unimportant, for a basis was thus laid for national boasts; and, but for the publication of Glanvill, Bracton and Britton, the work that was done by Coke would have been impossible.
Were any books about Roman law printed in England before 1600, except a few of Gentili’s?
The Court of Requests.
[63]See Mr Leadam’s Introduction toSelect Pleas in the Court of Requests(Seld. Soc.) andDict. Nat. Biog.s.n. Caesar, Sir Julius.
Cowell’s ‘Interpreter.’
[64]See Gardiner,Hist. England, 1603-1642, vol.II., pp. 66-68; E. C. Clark,Cambridge Legal Studies, pp. 74-75. Cowell’sInstitutiones(less known than theInterpreter) are an attempt, ‘in the main very able,’ so Dr Clark says, to bring English materials under Roman rubrics. It is a book which might have played a part in a Reception; but it came too late.
Roman-Dutch law.
[65]There can now be few, if any, countries outside the British Empire in which a rule of law is enforced because it is (or is deemed to be) a rule of Romanlaw. SeeGalliersv.Rycroft[1901] A. C. 130, for a recent discussion before the Judicial Committee (on an appeal from Natal) of the import of a passage in the Digest. Are there many lands in which so much respect would be paid by a tribunal and for practical purposes to a response of Papinian’s? I think not.
First Charter of Virginia.
[66]Macdonald,Select Charters, 1899, p. 1: ‘The first draft of the charter … was probably drawn by Sir John Popham … but the final form was the work of Sir Edward Coke, attorney general, and Sir John Dodderidge, solicitor general.’
First Assembly in Virginia.
[67]Doyle,The English in America, vol.I., p. 211: ‘On the 30th of July, 1619, the first Assembly met in the little church at Jamestown. A full report of its proceedings still exists in the English Record Office (Colonial Papers, July 30, 1619).’ An abstract is printed inCalendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 22.
The tenure of Maryland.
[68]Charter of Maryland, 1632, Macdonald,Select Charters, p. 53. In 1620 the grant to the Council of New England (Ibid., p. 23) referred to the manor of East Greenwich and reserved by way of rent a fifth part of the ore of gold and silver. The grant of Carolina (Ibid., p. 121) reserved a rent of twenty marks and a fourth of the ore. The grant of New Netherlands to the duke of York (Ibid., p. 136) reserved a rent of forty beaver skins, if demanded. The grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn speaksof the Castle of Windsor and reserves two beaver skins and a fifth of the gold and silver ore (Ibid., p. 185). Georgia was holden as of the honour of Hampton Court in the county of Middlesex at a rent of four shillings for every hundred acres that should be settled (Ibid., p. 242).
The tenure of Bombay.
[69]Charter of 1669 printed amongCharters granted to the East India Company(no date or publisher’s name): ‘to be holden of us, our heirs and successors as of the manor of East Greenwich in the county of Kent, in free and common soccage and not in capite nor by knight’s service, yielding and paying therefor to us, our heirs and successors at the Custom House, London, the rent or sum of ten pounds of lawful money of England in gold on the thirtieth day of September yearly for ever.’
The tenure of Prince Rupert’s land.
[70]Charter of 1670 incorporating the Hudson’s Bay Company, printed by Beckles Wilson,The Great Company, vol.II., pp. 318, 327: ‘yielding and paying yearly to us … two elks and two black beavers, whensoever and as often as we our heirs and successors shall happen to enter into the said countries, territories and regions hereby granted.’
Kent and Blackstone.
[71]Thayer,The Teaching of English Law at UniversitiesinHarvard Law Review, vol.IX., p. 170: ‘“I retired to a country village,” Chancellor Kent tells us in speaking of the breaking up of Yale College by the war, where he was a student in 1779, “and, finding Blackstone’s Commentaries, I read thefour volumes.… The work inspired me at the age of fifteen with awe, and I fondly determined to be a lawyer.” … “There is abundant evidence,” if we may rely upon the authority of Dr Hammond, whose language I quote, “of the immediate absorption of nearly twenty-five hundred copies of the Commentaries in the thirteen colonies before the Declaration of Independence.”’
Marshall and Blackstone.
[72]Thayer,John Marshall, 1901, p. 6: ‘When Marshall was about eighteen years old he began to study Blackstone.… He seems to have found a copy of Blackstone in his father’s house.… Just now the first American edition was out (Philadelphia, 1771-2), in which the list of subscribers, headed by the name of “John Adams, barrister at law, Boston,” had also that of “Captain Thomas Marshall, Clerk of Dunmore County.”’
Roman law in America.
[73]It may be interesting to notice that in 1856, and perhaps even in 1871, Sir H. Maine believed that the Code of Louisiana (‘of all republications of Roman law the one which appears to us the clearest, the fullest, the most philosophical and the best adapted to the exigencies of modern society’) had a grand destiny before it in the United States. ‘Now it is this code, and not the Common Law of England which the newest American States are taking for the substratum of their laws.… The Roman law is, therefore, fast becoming the lingua franca of universal jurisprudence.’ (Maine,Roman Law and Legal Education, 1856, reprinted inVillageCommunities, ed. 3, pp. 360-1.) Nowadays this hope or fear of a Reception of Roman law in the United States seems, so I am given to understand, quite unfounded. See e.g. J. F. Dillon,Laws and Jurisprudence of England and America, 1894, p. 155: ‘the common law [in distinction from the Roman or civil law] is the basis of the laws of every State and Territory of the Union, with comparatively unimportant and gradually waning exceptions.’
Ihering and the litigious Englishman.
[74]Ihering,Der Kampf um’s Recht, ed. 10, pp. 45, 69: ‘Ich habe bereits oben das Beispiel des kampflustigen Engländers angeführt, und ich kann hier nur wiederholen, was ich dort gesagt: in dem Gulden, um den er hartnäckig streitet, steckt die politische Entwicklung Englands. Einem Volke, bei dem es allgemeine Uebung ist, dass Jeder auch im Kleinen und Kleinsten sein Recht tapfer behauptet, wird Niemand wagen, das Höchste, was es hat, zu entreissen, und es ist daher kein Zufall, dass dasselbe Volk des Alterthums, welches im Innern die höchste politische Entwicklung und nach Aussen hin die grösste Kraftentfaltung aufzuweisen hat, das römische, zugleich das ausgebildetste Privatrecht besass.’
Codes in English Colonies.
[75]Thus in particular Queensland in 1899 enacted a criminal code of 707 sections. SeeJournal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, New Ser., vol.VI., pp. 555-560: ‘The precedents utilised in framing the Code were the [in England abortive] draft English codes of 1879 and 1880, the Italian PenalCode of 1888, and the Penal Code of the State of New York.’ See also Ilbert,Legislative Methods, p. 155.
German Civil Code.
[76]Some information in English about the new German code will be found in articles by Mr E. Schuster,Law Quarterly Review, vol.XII., p. 17, andJournal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, Old Series, vol.I., p. 191. Despite the careful exclusion of almost all words derived from the Latin (exceptHypothek, which happens to be Greek), the new law book may look Roman to an Englishman; but then it does not look Roman to Germans. The following sentences are taken from a speech delivered in the Reichstag (Mugdan,Materialien zum bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch, vol.I., pp. 876-7): ‘In dieser Beziehung ist vor Allem der Vorwurf gegen den Entwurf erhoben, er enthalte materiell kein deutsches Recht.… Selten ist ein Vorwurf unbegründeter gewesen.… Das Sachenrecht ist von A bis Z durchaus deutsches Recht.… Was dann den Begriff des Besitzes betrifft, von der ganzen römischen Besitztheorie ist nichts übrig geblieben.… Der allgemeine Theil des Obligationenrechtes ist natürlich römischen Ursprunges.… Kommen wir aber zu den einzelnen speziellen Rechtsgeschäften, so treffen wir auch da sofort wieder deutsches Recht.… Auch das Familienrecht ist durchaus deutschrechtlich.… Dann ist das Erbrecht durch und durch deutschrechtlichen Ursprunges.…’ The supposition that codification means romanizationis baseless; it may mean deromanization. But the great lesson to be learnt by Englishmen from the German Code is that a democratically elected assembly, which is for many purposes divided into bitterly contending fractions, can be induced to show a wonderful forbearance when uniformity of law is to be attained.
Unity of law.
[77]Molinaeus (Charles Du Moulin),Oratio de concordia et unione consuetudinum Franciae, inOpera(1681), vol.II., p. 691: ‘Mihi quoque videtur nihil aptius, nihil efficacius ad plures provincias sub eodem imperio retinendas et fovendas, nec fortius nec honestius vinculum quam communio et conformitas eorundem morum legumve utilium et aequabilium.’
The school at Harvard.
[78]The name of Harvard is here mentioned without prejudice to the just claims of any other American university; but theHarvard Law Review, edited by a committee of students, is a journal of which any school might be proud.