Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... II PURITANISM AND THE LAW LEGAL history, as we now know it, began to be written after Savigny and so after Hegel. 'Hence the "great-man interpretation" of history which was superseded by Hegel's idealistic interpretation, has never played much part in the literature of law. The attributing of ancient "codes" to gods or to divinely inspired sages or the Greek and Roman practice of attributing a whole body of legal and political institutions to some one lawgiver are another matter. They represent an attempt to put symbolically the sacredness of the law or the antiquity and authority of the custom on which the general security rests, and their place is taken in modern times by an idea that our traditionally received body of law is based upon an eternal intrinsic reasonableness. Yet something might be said for a greatlawyer interpretation of legal history. One might attribute progress in legal institutions and the development of legal doctrines to the influence and the genius of leaders among juristic writers, judges and practising lawyers. Lord Campbell thought the lives of the Chancellors and of the Chief Justices might be made to tell the history of the English constitution and the history of English law. Not long ago a writer sought to give us the spirit of the classical Roman law through a study of the life and charac 32 ter of Papinian. Undoubtedly the great lawyer has not been the least factor in legal history. Roman law without Papinian and Ulpian and Paul, the civil law of the modern world without Bartolus, international law without Grotius, French law without Pothier, German law without Savigny, the common law without Coke, or American constitutional law without Marshall, are almost unthinkable. But it may be that lawyers are...
