10. What was the responsa prudentum? 11. What was the imperial rescripts ? 12. What compilations were made under Justinian? 13. Give the cause that led to the loss of the civil law? 14. What discovery, or assumed discovery, revived it? 15. What hostility did it encounter in England? 16. What courts adopted and followed it? 17. What was Sir Matthew Hale's opinion on the value of the civil law? 18. What was Lord Holt's view? 19. What subjects is it specially helpful in, to us to-day? 20. How should the Institutes be studied? Notes, Readings and References. The importance and value of the study of the civil law may be gathered from the Report of the American Bar Association on Legal Education. And an additional interest should prevail at the present time in all our law schools, and among the office students of our seaport cities particularly, in view of the special attention now paid to the Latin Republics of our southern hemisphere, as their representatives are in counsel with our own for promotion of closer relationship in trade, commerce, and friendly co-operation. In their Report for 1879, the American Bar Association, at page 221, states that "Lord Hale lamented much that the Roman law was so little studied in England. Blackstone recommended the study of it, particularly to the young men of his day. Mr. Austin, in his work on jurisprudence, regrets that this study continues to be neglected in England, and that the real merits of its founders are so little understood; and Lord Mackenzie confessed that Great Britain has contributed little to Roman jurisprudence. It is not venturing too far to assert that what is thus said of Englishmen is of equal application to ourselves. The civil law is a precious repository of legal principles. **** It has given civilization to Continental Europe, and prevails there as the basis of the general continental system. Without acquaintance with it, that system cannot be understood. ** It presents a model of scientific method and arrangement confessedly superior to any other; it supplies much of the language of international law and diplomacy, and a great part of equity and of the common law itself is derived from it. The laws which make it up are not acts merely of power and authority, but of wisdom, reason and justice." Chapter XLIV. of Gibbon's Rome, covering some eighty pages, should be carefully studied by the student. Millman states that this chapter is used as a text book on civil law in some of the foreign universities. It treats of "The laws of the kings; the twelve tables of the decemvirs; the laws of the people; the decrees of the senate; the edicts of the magistrates and emperors; authority of the civilians; Code, Pandects, Novels, and Institutes of Justinian-I. Rights of persons. II. Rights of things. III. Private injuries and actions. IV. Crimes and punishments." Hadley's Roman Law, a small Lord Mansfield.—To his knowledge and fondness for the civil law, is to be attributed a great part of Lord Mansfield's success in laying so well the foundation of the commercial law of England and of this country. He considered the Roman civil law the foundation of jurisprudence, and Lord Campbell says of him-" That he availed himself, as often as opportunity admitted, of his ample stores of knowledge, acquired from his study of the Roman civil law, and of the judicial writers produced in modern times by France, Germany, Holland and Italy; not only in doing justice to the parties litigating before him, but in settling with precision and upon sound principles a general rule, afterwards to be quoted and recognized as governing all similar cases." In Lickbarrow v. Mason, Mr. Justice BULLER said: “Within these thirty years the commercial law of this country has taken a very different turn from what it did before. Before that period we find that in courts of law all the evidence in mercantile cases was thrown together; they were left generally to a jury; and they produced no general principle. From that time the great study has been to find some certain general principle not only for the particular case but to serve for the future. Most of us have heard these principles stated, reasoned upon, enlarged and explained, till we have been lost in admiration at the strength and stretch of the understanding. And I should be very sorry to find myself under a necessity of differing from any case upon this subject which has been decided by Lord Mansfield, who may be truly said to be the founder of the commercial law of this country:" Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices of England, Vol. iii, page 301. American Law Register, N. S., vol. ii, p. 385, "On the study of the Civil Law." American Law Register, N. S., vol. xii, p. 673, "The Relation of the Civil to the Common Law." Note. With this number we finish Part III., and close our studies on The Sources of Municipal Law. But before leaving this subject, to enter upon the more practical studies that we are to meet with in Part IV., on "The Rights of Persons," it may aid to further investigation and study, were we to have before us a chart of the development of law from the earliest date to the present time, as given in Platt's essay on the "Development of Jurisprudence," and entitled "A CHRONOLOGY OF LAW." Laws of the domestic relations derived from the Aryan worship of ancestors. . Mythological worship-State religion—gives no private law. Mosaic Law. Rome founded-the legislature (comitia curiata) an assemblage of priests-law sacerdotal. Servius Tullius secularizes the constitution. The laws made by the army (comitia centuriata). Republican Rome-kings expelled-consuls. The plebs (comitia tributa) make plebescites. Patricians frame the laws of the Twelve Tables. Secular or contract marriages allowed with the Patricians. Distinctions of class abolished. The first praetor begins to make law by his edict. Praetor Peregrinus appointed. Greek philosophers as embassadors expelled. Birth of Cicero. Death of Scaevola. The Empire. Universal immorality. The birth of Christ. Emperor attracts to himself all power. Perpetual edict begins codification. Papinian, Ulpian, and Paulus, jurisconsults. .Gregonian and Hermogenean codes. Theodosian (428), Justinian (533) codes. Germans have written laws. Bishop Augmendus, first Saxon chancellor. Bishop Maurice, the Conqueror's chancellor. Revival of civil law. Gratian's code of canon law. Vacarius, a priest, teaches civil law at Oxford. Magna Charta, written by Archbishop Langton. Edward I. Bishop Burnell, the Justinian of his age. Henry VIII. The Reformation. The Divorce of Henry weak- The logical element of law begins to be more and more separated from its moral. Law must become a science of general principles. Rules will, be too numerous to be remembered. T. ELLIOTT PATTERSON. |