Abstract
The formative period of American was a period in United States legal history, which may be characterized as one of experimentation.1 The split with Britain politically also signaled a split in terms of law.2 The new nation and its lawyers and legislators were faced with choices. They could continue to use British law; they could formulate their own new and unique laws, they could borrow laws from nations other than Britain. In fact, they did all of this and more. Perhaps the least well-known and understood aspect of this period of legal experimentation and legal syncretism is the extent to which the new nation looked to Europe and European legal systems for its legal development. Some work has been done on borrowing from Roman law during this period, particularly by Roscoe Pound, R.H. Helmholz, and Peter Stein.3 In 1997 I published a brief treatment on the influence of Roman law on the development of jurisprudential thinking in the United States during this period.4 But one important aspect of such borrowing, if not full-scale reception, of foreign law in the early history of the United States has not received adequate scholarly treatment: the problem of language.
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