Ancient Law : Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas: By Sir Henry Sumner Maine |
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Agnatic allodial ancient law appears archaic authority Canon Civil Law civilisation codes Comitia common conception condition Contract conveyance Court Court of Chancery crimes criminal dence descendants distinction doctrine duties earliest early Edict eldest Emphyteusis Empire English epoch Equity Europe existence expression fact feudal fiction Greek Heir Hindoo ideas infancy influence inheritance institutions juris jurisconsults jurists Jus Gentium Justinian kings language Law of Nature legal fictions legislation mankind ment mode modern moral Natural Law never Nexum notion Obligation observed offences origin ownership Patria Potestas patriarchal peculiar period person philosophy political possession Post 8vo Prętor primitive Primogeniture principle proprietary punishment Quasi-Contract question race recognised relation remarkable res nullius Roman jurisprudence Roman law Roman lawyers Rome rules seems slaves social society speculative supposed Testament Testamentary Testator Themistes theory tion tribes true Twelve Tables universal succession usage Western
Popular passages
Page 170 - Contract. The word Status may be usefully employed to construct a formula expressing the law of progress thus indicated, which, whatever be its value, seems to me to be sufficiently ascertained. All the forms of Status taken notice of in the Law of Persons were derived from, and to some extent are still coloured by, the powers and privileges anciently residing in the Family. If then we employ Status, agreeably with the usage of the best writers, to signify these personal conditions only, and avoid...
Page 128 - ... ("The elementary group is the Family, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant. The aggregation of Families forms the Gens or House. The aggregation of Houses makes the Tribe. The aggregation of Tribes constitutes the Commonwealth...
Page 125 - ... the situation in which mankind disclose themselves at the dawn of their history, I should be satisfied to quote a few verses from the Odyssey of Homer : rulaiv $' our' uyopai flov\ti<f>opoi ovrt QlfUOTlVtl Il tKOOTOf a\eyovaiv.
Page 256 - ... objects of enjoyment have been subjected to private ownership, that mere possession is allowed to invest the first possessor with dominion over commodities in which no prior proprietorship has been asserted. The sentiment in which this doctrine originated is absolutely irreconcilable with that infrequency and uncertainty of proprietary rights which distinguish the beginnings of civilisation.
Page 258 - The vice is one which necessarily afflicts all the theories descended from the Natural Law of the Romans, which differed principally from their Civil Law in the account which it took of Individuals, and which has rendered precisely its greatest service to civilisation in enfranchising the individual from the authority of archaic society. But Ancient Law, it must again be repeated, knows next to nothing of Individuals. It is concerned not with Individuals, but with Families, not with single human...
Page 22 - It is indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be improved since the moment when external completeness was first given to them by their embodiment in some permanent record. One set of usages has occasionally been violently overthrown and superseded by another ; here and there a primitive code, pretending to a supernatural origin, has been greatly extended, and distorted into the most surprising forms, by the perversity...
Page 82 - III. should have been able to put off on his countrymen as a compendium of pure English law a tr^tise of which the entire form and a third of the contents were directly borrowed from the Corpus Juris, and that he should have ventured on this experiment in a country where the systematic study of the Roman law was formally proscribed, will always be among the most hopeless enigmas in the history...
Page 46 - All nations," says the Institutional Treatise published under the authority of the Emperor Justinian, " who are ruled by laws and customs, are governed partly by their own particular laws, and partly by those laws which are common to all mankind. The law which a people enacts is called the Civil Law of that people, but that which natural reason appoints for all mankind is called the Law of Nations, because all nations use it.
Page 164 - The simple wish to use the bodily powers of another person as a means of ministering to one's own ease or pleasure is doubtless the foundation of Slavery, and as old as human nature.