Comparative legal teaching in eighteenth-century Oxford: an analysis of Thomas Bever’s Appendix to his lectures

Abstract

Abstract In the 1760s and 1770s, Thomas Bever, a once-eminent but today nearly-forgotten English civilian, was delivering a course of lectures devoted to civil law at Oxford. The final part of those lectures, known as the Appendix, was of a different character from the earlier parts. In the Appendix Bever discussed the development of the law and constitution of 15 European countries. His description was an attempt to compare different systems and to abstract general legal concepts common to different countries. Along with other issues, Bever was specifically interested in abstracting the common roots of medieval feudalism. The analysis offered in this article is the result of archival investigation comparing two different versions of Bever’s lecture notes. The main objective of the article is to reconstruct Bever’s narrative, together with analysing his methodology and the intellectual framework of his work. This investigation reveals the intricacies of the legal education offered at Oxford in the second half of the eighteenth century.