Roman Lawyers Research Articles

Liberty, Right, and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought by Annabel S. Brett

Liberty, Right, and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought. By Annabel S. Brett. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. xii, 254.) The word ius, as anyone acquainted with medieval juristic or scholastic texts recognizes immediately, poses a baffling array of problems for those who wish to explicate its range of meanings. Annabel Brett has written an important and stimulating book that provides such an explication with respect to scholastic discourse of fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as well as writings of Spanish Neo-Scholastics of sixteenth century and Thomas Hobbes in seventeenth. In asuming this challenging undertaking, Brett has performed a signal service for scholars. Our knowledge of uses to which this term was put has been enriched substantially by her work. Brett's work is divisible into two large sections, each consisting of three chapters. In first half of her book, she addresses formation of scholastic discourse of individual rights. She begins by rebutting notion, advanced by historians like Richard Tuck, that equivalence between ius and dominium made by some thirteenth- and fourteenth-century writers amounts to the `origin' of modern subjective right in its most radical form . . . in which it is preeminently associated with liberty, with property, and with a certain idea of (p. 10).To be sure, some thirteenth-century writers, especially theologians associated with Franciscan Order, did make such an equation. St. Bonaventure and John Pecham, for instance, equated ius and dominium as part of a larger effort to understand freedom of will necessary to renounce goods of this world: Ius as much as dominium involved ability to claim in court (p. 18), and so violated spirit of humilitas required of every Friar Minor. But most medieval authors, Brett continues, did not make ius-*dominium equivalence a central part of their thought on freedom of individual. Brett brings this point home by reviewing works of Roman lawyers like Bartolus of Sassoferrato and authors of Summae confessorum of late thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. She closes chapter by looking to writers of late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, such as Conrad Summenhart and John Mair, to conclude that analysis of the equivalence of dominium and ius . . . did not bequeath to scholastics of sixteenth century a language of ius as sovereignty or indifferent choice (p. 48). After refuting those who would see dominium-ius as origin of Western subjective rights talk, Brett turns her attention in next two chapters to role played by scholastic writers in shaping of Western rights vocabulary. The story she tells is compelling and important. She sees William of Ockham as playing a crucial role in development of this vocabulary, especially in philosophically rigorous definition he offered of ius as a potestas licita. She avoids pitfall of tracing Ockham's definition back to his nominalist and voluntarist roots, recognizing that practice of characterizing scholars' work as nominalist or realist and reading into such characterizations assumed commitments about right and justice has deeply distorted much older writing about history of subjective rights. Brett's intention is to take full account of the many intellectual strands that have come to shape early history of rights (p. 50). She thus considers contribution of such writers as Richard Fitzralph and John Wyclif. She closes chapter with a discussion of Jean Gerson, who articulated a theory of rights as faculties or powers held or exercised in accord with right reason. Brett's treatment of Gerson is marred by her shortchanging possibility that Gerson was influenced by a tradition of rights discourse that extended back to twelfth-century decretists. …

Guillaume Bude, Andrea Alciato, Pierre de l'Estoile: Renaissance Interpreters of Roman Law

Guillaume Budé, Andrea Alciato, Pierre de l’Estoile: Renaissance Interpreters of Roman Law Michael L. Monheit In the Renaissance, jurists and other scholars intensely debated the problem of how to interpret correctly the Corpus iuris civilis (CIC), Justinian’s great sixth-century-ad compilation of Roman law. 1 Yet by the sixteenth century jurists had been closely interpreting its texts for four centuries; indeed Roman law jurists, much more than pre-Reformation theologians, innovated through close commentary on the text (a characteristic sometimes wrongly considered a humanist innovation). Assuming that these texts were fully consistent, largely lacking a sense of historical distance, they “found” the CIC’s dictum on a given question by weaving many passages that seemed to address it partially into a complex logical fabric, and eliminated apparent internal conceptual disparities in the same way. 2 But from the fifteenth century such humanists as Lorenzo Valla (1407–57) and Angelo Politiano (1454–94) applied humanist critical methods to the CIC and ridiculed the methods of the civilians. In the early sixteenth century the work of Guillaume Budé (1468–1540), Andrea Alciato (1492–1550), and Ulrich Zasius (1461–1535) intensified the crisis in legal interpretation. Budé, the [End Page 21] period’s leading French humanist, was the first humanist to publish an exhaustive study of Justinian’s Digest, while the Milanese jurist Alciato and the German jurist Zasius were among the first humanist-trained Roman lawyers to tackle the CIC. Across the century’s first three decades these humanists debated each other and other jurists, including the eminent Orléans professor of Roman law, Pierre de l’Estoile (1480–1537), best known to scholars as the teacher of a youthful law student named Jean Calvin. 3 We consider here a debate between Budé, Alciato, and Estoile, which also involved Nicolas Duchemin, Estoile’s student and partisan, and Calvin himself, who made his first appearance in print by contributing a preface to the work of his friend Duchemin. Though often referred to in Calvin scholarship, the debate has never been thoroughly explored. 4 [End Page 22] Unlike some recent studies of interpretation in the Renaissance, this study focuses on each interpreter’s practice, rather than his explicit methodological pronouncements alone, on what Wittgenstein calls a writer’s “language game”—here the meaning of each interpreter’s statements in the context of his interpretive practices. Indeed we shall view this debate as a clash of three “forms of life,” since the three protagonists could not agree as to what rules to follow to determine the meaning of a particular expression. 5 In the passage in question, Lex Nec quicquam, §Ubi decretum, from the Digest section On the Duties of the Proconsul and Legate (D.1.16.9.1), the third century Imperial jurist Ulpian, declares: Ubi decretum necessarium est per libellum id expedire proconsul non poterit: Omnia enim quaecunque causae cognitionem desiderant per libellum non possunt expediri. (Where a decretum [decree] is required, the proconsul will not be able to dispose of the matter per libellum. All matters whatsoever requiring causae cognitio [judicial investigation] cannot be disposed of per libellum.) In unravelling the meaning of such key terms as decretum and libellus, the interpreters applied assumptions and practices rooted in both the humanist and [End Page 23] scholastic traditions—sometimes the same individual applied both. The debate presents the issue of interpretation apart from that of textual recovery, for no participant claimed any passage involved had been corrupted or offered a significant variant. Had they possessed the Mommsen edition of the CIC (albeit without necessarily understanding its principles of construction), each would have faced little added difficulty. I. Guillaume Budé on §Ubi decretum Guillaume Budé sparked the debate with his comments on the passage in the first part of his famous study of Justinian’s Digest, the Annotationes in quattuor & viginti Pandectarum libros (1508). He argued that the term libellus as used in the passage meant a supplicatory petition addressed to the Emperor. The matters involved could include both controversial cases, for which the Emperor would rely on the judgment of his council, and uncontested matters in which Emperors acted by their own “liberality or beneficence.” Budé confined himself to the...

Guillaume Bude, Andrea Alciato, Pierre de l'Estoile: Renaissance Interpreters of Roman Law

Guillaume Budé, Andrea Alciato, Pierre de l’Estoile: Renaissance Interpreters of Roman Law Michael L. Monheit In the Renaissance, jurists and other scholars intensely debated the problem of how to interpret correctly the Corpus iuris civilis (CIC), Justinian’s great sixth-century-ad compilation of Roman law. 1 Yet by the sixteenth century jurists had been closely interpreting its texts for four centuries; indeed Roman law jurists, much more than pre-Reformation theologians, innovated through close commentary on the text (a characteristic sometimes wrongly considered a humanist innovation). Assuming that these texts were fully consistent, largely lacking a sense of historical distance, they “found” the CIC’s dictum on a given question by weaving many passages that seemed to address it partially into a complex logical fabric, and eliminated apparent internal conceptual disparities in the same way. 2 But from the fifteenth century such humanists as Lorenzo Valla (1407–57) and Angelo Politiano (1454–94) applied humanist critical methods to the CIC and ridiculed the methods of the civilians. In the early sixteenth century the work of Guillaume Budé (1468–1540), Andrea Alciato (1492–1550), and Ulrich Zasius (1461–1535) intensified the crisis in legal interpretation. Budé, the [End Page 21] period’s leading French humanist, was the first humanist to publish an exhaustive study of Justinian’s Digest, while the Milanese jurist Alciato and the German jurist Zasius were among the first humanist-trained Roman lawyers to tackle the CIC. Across the century’s first three decades these humanists debated each other and other jurists, including the eminent Orléans professor of Roman law, Pierre de l’Estoile (1480–1537), best known to scholars as the teacher of a youthful law student named Jean Calvin. 3 We consider here a debate between Budé, Alciato, and Estoile, which also involved Nicolas Duchemin, Estoile’s student and partisan, and Calvin himself, who made his first appearance in print by contributing a preface to the work of his friend Duchemin. Though often referred to in Calvin scholarship, the debate has never been thoroughly explored. 4 [End Page 22] Unlike some recent studies of interpretation in the Renaissance, this study focuses on each interpreter’s practice, rather than his explicit methodological pronouncements alone, on what Wittgenstein calls a writer’s “language game”—here the meaning of each interpreter’s statements in the context of his interpretive practices. Indeed we shall view this debate as a clash of three “forms of life,” since the three protagonists could not agree as to what rules to follow to determine the meaning of a particular expression. 5 In the passage in question, Lex Nec quicquam, §Ubi decretum, from the Digest section On the Duties of the Proconsul and Legate (D.1.16.9.1), the third century Imperial jurist Ulpian, declares: Ubi decretum necessarium est per libellum id expedire proconsul non poterit: Omnia enim quaecunque causae cognitionem desiderant per libellum non possunt expediri. (Where a decretum [decree] is required, the proconsul will not be able to dispose of the matter per libellum. All matters whatsoever requiring causae cognitio [judicial investigation] cannot be disposed of per libellum.) In unravelling the meaning of such key terms as decretum and libellus, the interpreters applied assumptions and practices rooted in both the humanist and [End Page 23] scholastic traditions—sometimes the same individual applied both. The debate presents the issue of interpretation apart from that of textual recovery, for no participant claimed any passage involved had been corrupted or offered a significant variant. Had they possessed the Mommsen edition of the CIC (albeit without necessarily understanding its principles of construction), each would have faced little added difficulty. I. Guillaume Budé on §Ubi decretum Guillaume Budé sparked the debate with his comments on the passage in the first part of his famous study of Justinian’s Digest, the Annotationes in quattuor & viginti Pandectarum libros (1508). He argued that the term libellus as used in the passage meant a supplicatory petition addressed to the Emperor. The matters involved could include both controversial cases, for which the Emperor would rely on the judgment of his council, and uncontested matters in which Emperors acted by their own “liberality or beneficence.” Budé confined himself to the...

English and European Political Ideas in the Early Seventeenth Century: Revisionism and the Case of Absolutism

The central argument of this article is that English political thinking in the early seventeenth century was not distinctively English. More particularly, we shall see that a number of English writers put forward political doctrines that were precisely the same as those of Continental theorists who are usually described as absolutists. If the Continental thinkers were absolutists, then so were the English writers. The theory of absolutism vested sovereign power in the ruler alone and forbade disobedience to the sovereign's commands unless they contradicted the injunctions of God Himself. It is with the theory of absolutism and not with its practice that this article is concerned.To claim that English and Continental ideas closely resembled each other, and that absolutism flourished on both sides of the Channel, is to challenge not only the old Whig interpretation of English history but also the newer views of so-called revisionists. True, the revisionists often say that they reject Whig ideas. But in fact they adopt some of the central contentions of the Whigs. In order to set what follows into a broad historiographical context, it may be worthwhile to elaborate a little on this theme.Whig historians of the nineteenth century were keen to emphasize the distinctiveness of England's political development. The Anglo-Saxons, they argued, brought free and democratic institutions into England from their Teutonic forests. Elsewhere in Europe, liberty succumbed to the authoritarianism of popes, kings, and Roman lawyers, but the sea kept foreigners and their unpleasant ways out of England, and there freedom lived on. When the Conqueror came, the old English liberties were for a while in jeopardy.

Greckie wpływy na powstanie Ustawy XII Tablic : (na marginesie glosy Accursiusa do D. 1,2,2,4)

The problem of Greek influence on the creation and the content of the Twelve Tables appeared several times in Roman lawyers’ records. Amongst few jurists, Pomponius wrote about the influence of Greek cities law on the Twelve Tables in the famous fragment on the history of Roman law from his Enchiridion (D. 1,2,2,3-4). Accursius gave an ample gloss to the fragment. He cites an anecdote on the creation of the Twelve Tables: „Greeks had delegated a wise man to visit Rome in order to estimate, after a discussion with its inhabitants, whether they are mature enough to be presented with the law that was prepared. Romans reached the decision that a fool should confront the Greek: there would be no damage to them if he lost, they thought. Obviously, both had to speak by signs. „The Greek started the duel raising one finger what meant that he believed in one God. The Roman took it as an attack on his eye and showed two fingers, which made three with his thumb, in order to be dangerous for both eyes of his adversary. However, the visitor understood the gesture as an acceptance of faith in one God with addition that He is triune. Referring to that, the Greek showed an open palm - it signified that everything is known to the Almighty. Yet, the fool thought that it is to strike his hand and raised the fist to demonstrate that he was going to defend himself. The wise man from Greece understood it as a statement that God has human fortune in His hand and reigns over all affairs of this world. „After this conversation, the Greek concluded that Roman society is developed in the degree they can be gifted with the prepared statue” . The story is one of the first notes on Greek influence on the Twelve Tables. It shows the total lack o f historic perpsective that was shared by glossators in the Middle Ages. The article contains also some references to the historiography of the Greek influence on the Twelve Tables.

Si morbus aevitasve vitium escit

Considering the Twelve Tables today, it seems important to question whether the statute was humanitarian. It became also problematic for Roman lawyers six centuries after its passage. Aulus Gellius in Noctes Atticae (Gell.20.1.1)55) presents the dispute between philosopher Favorinus from Areate and Sextus Caecilius, who was a jurist. One of the main discussed provision was: Si morbus aevitasve vitium escit, [qui in ius vocabit] iumentum dato. Si nolet, arceram ne sternito (tab. 1.2 Gell.20.1.25). The philosopher alleged it was inhuman to interdict the delivery of a comfortable vehicle for a seriously diseased or for an old man who was unable to walk as well as to command the transport in ius on beasts of burden (Gell.20.1.11). Arguing that verbis moribusque sententia legum conprehensa est, the lawyer claimed that the Twelve Tables were humanitarian (Gell.20.1.24). It is because the provision had a different meaning (Gell.20.1.26), as morbus meant not a serious illness, which was called morbus sonticus by Decemviri, but usual problems with walking (Gell.20.1.27). Similarly, the iumentum was not only a beast of burden, but a country waggon as well (Gell.20.1.28). The country waggon should be delivered by a plaintiff to ill or aged dependents. However, if defendants had not been satisfied with the ordinary waggon, the plaintiff did not need to offer the comfortable vehicle (Gell.20.1.29)30). The jurist’s argumentation convinced the philosopher and was accepted by their audience.

The Legacy of Roman Law in the German Romantic Era: Historical Vision and Legal Change.

Well after the process of codification had begun elsewhere in nineteenth-century Europe, ancient Roman law remained in use in Germany, expounded by brilliant scholars and applied in both urban and rural courts. The survival of this flourishing Roman legal culture into the industrial era is a familiar fact, but until now little effort has been made to explain it outside the province of specialized legal history. James Whitman seeks to remedy this neglect by exploring the broad political and cultural significance of German Roman law, emphasizing the hope on the part of German Roman lawyers that they could in some measure revive the Roman social order in their own society. Discussing the background of Romantic era law in the law of the Reformation, Whitman makes the great German tradition of legal scholarship more accessible to all those interested in German history. Drawing on treatises already known to legal historians as well as on previously unexploited records of legal practice, Whitman traces the traditions that allowed nineteenth-century German lawyers like Savigny to present themselves as uniquely impartial and unpolitical. This book will be of particular interest to students of the many German thinkers who were trained as Roman lawyers, among them Marx and Weber. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Edward Gibbon, Roman Lawyer

The latter part of the Eighteenth Century was not a highpoint in the history of the study of Roman law in Great Britain. The great days of the English civilians were past' and the revival of Roman law studies sparked by the German historical school had not yet begun.2 The Regius chairs at Oxford and Cambridge had been reduced to sinecures, their incumbents were men of little learning and even less energy.3 Doctors' Commons was in decline and the general state of learning in the field was poor.4 On the continent things were a bit better. Heineccius was the dominant force and his histories and manuals dominated both scholarly publishing on Roman law and in the schools.5 The Dutch, too, continued to be prolific scholars and authors in Roman jurisprudence, though by the latter half of the century their days of scholarly glory were also past.6 Indeed, so definite did the decline in Roman law studies seem to contemporaries that the Edinburgh scholar and librarian, David Irving, began the first edition of his Observations on the Study of the Civil

Legal Institutions: The Development of Dispute Settlement by Professor P. G. Stein

Legal Institutions: The Development of Dispute Settlement by Professor P. G. Stein. Published by Butterworth Law Publishers Ltd, London (1984, ix and 236 pp, including index). Hardcover £12.50. Softcover £8.50 . It is a daunting task to attempt to write an introductory book on the nature of English law, summarising the substantive law and the values which lie beneath it, together with its court system and procedures for the resolution of civil disputes. To set this off against other ancient (Roman) and modern (in this case primarily the French and German) legal systems adds to the complexity of the undertaking. Throw in a summary of ideas derived from modern anthropological researches, and the demands made on the author become almost unimaginable. Peter Stein has made a valuable attempt to achieve the impossible. The book is divided into two parts, reflecting the quality of meanings of ‘legal institutions’. In the first part, Stein deals with the external institutions of the system: its courts and other methods of dispute resolution. In the second, the reader is presented with an analysis of the internal ‘institutions’ of the law, in the sense in which the word was used by the Roman lawyers: its substantive categories of persons, property and obligations. To lawyers, the material in part one is the most unfamiliar and the most interesting. We move from the problems of the resolution of disputes in primitive cultures, with their stress on the desirability of finding an acceptable solution to a situation of conflict between two individuals or kin-groups, to the more sophisticated societies which aim not merely to …

“Pro Peccatis Patrum Puniri”: A Moral and Legal Problem of the Inquisition

The first letter in Pope Innocent III's register of his second year was Vergentis in senium, a letter which he sent to the city of Viterbo in March, 1199. The decretal reflected Innocent's growing concern with heresy in the papal states and established new and more stringent penalties for those who rejected or subverted the Christian faith. In Vergentis, perhaps following the Roman lawyer Placentinus, Innocent imposed the traditional spiritual punishment of excommunication on heretics, equated heresy with lese majesty, and applied to convicted heretics the sanctions for treason in Roman law: complete confiscation of goods, even disinheriting innocent children. The punishment was fitting, Innocent observed, because a heretic injured celestial majesty, a crime far more heinous than any offense committed against temporal authority. Since the heretics in Viterbo continued to demand his attention later in his pontificate, we do not know how effective Innocent's decree was, but Vergentis did establish a precedent for papal action throughout Christendom. In order to root out all vestiges of heresy, Innocent extended the provisions of the decretal from the heretics themselves to their “supporters, defenders, and harborers.” The decretal marked the first firm step of his increasingly grim policy to use all of the resources of the church to extirpate heresy from Christian lands. The step from Viterbo to the Albigensian crusade was a short one. And, since heresy was an ecclesiastical crime, both laymen and clerics who were accused of heresy had their cases heard in ecclesiastical courts, giving lawyers another item to add to the list of cases in which the pope could exercise jurisdiction in the secular world.

Вплив римського права на діяльність юридичного факультету Львівського університету з 1661 до 1918 рр.

У статті автор досліджує вплив римського права на діяльність юридичного факультету Львівського університету. Показується важливість вивчення сьогодні римського права для студентів та науковців. Висвітлюються важливі дослідження відомих професорів-науковців, які працювали на юридичному факультеті Львівського університету з 1661 до 1918 рр. та розкрито їх внесок у дослідженні римського права.
 Автор статті стверджує, що побудова в Україні правової, демократичної держави неможлива без належного вивчення досвіду, знань та практичних навичок, які існували в Римській державі. Оскільки так, як приймались норми права та втілювалися у життя, було, є та залишається взірцем для наслідування. Норми права, прийняті у Римській імперії, відзначаються своєю логічною побудовою, простотою та справедливістю. Така їх внутрішня будова та структурованість одержала загальне визнання у всьому світі. Норми римського права присутні у системах права багатьох держав світу, у точу числі і України.

Roman Law in the Writings of Paul: Adoption

SOME three years ago Professor G. M. Taylor suggested that in Galatians Paul used the word Ltarts to denote the Roman institution of fidei commissum or an exact Galatian equivalent.' He finished his article with the statement, If Paul can have known about fidei commissum, and if it befits his argument, it is certainly arguable that he actually used it. Professor Taylor's point therefore depends upon knowledge and its suitability. I wish here to take this up from the point of view of a Roman lawyer, using it to suggest a Roman content for the much discussed concept of adoption, which Professor Taylor seems to assume. In so doing I accept the Pauline authorship of those epistles traditionally ascribed to him, and, for the same reasons as Professor Taylor, rely on the de Zulueta edition of Gaius' Institutes.2 Paul uses the metaphor of adoption five times in all, in three places in Romans and once each in Ephesians and Galatians. Of all his expressions it is one of the most discussed. Some are content to see in it only the de facto adoption that existed in British law until the passing of the Adoption Acts in this century.3 Others refer the concept to Jewish law and even the deliverance of the children of Israel at the exodus.4 It is true that here and there the Roman content is put,5 but it is not adequately substantiated and more formal suggestions seem not

Civitas—A Myth?

Mr J. C. MANN holds that ‘each civitas of Gaul (and of Britain) was presumably a city, and like all true cities, each will have consisted of a single physical city surrounded by its territorium, the whole under the control of its magistrates, council and assembly, the last no doubt usually of little importance.’ I, on the other hand, following Jullian and Stevens, have suggested that the civitas was the whole tribal area, its capital (caput) normally ranking merely as a vicus where the government happened to have its seat. This, Mr Mann suggests, is a myth, which he doubts whether a Roman lawyer would understand.The evidence admittedly is not all that it might be; yet as the question is important for a correct understanding of the development of local government in Roman Britain (and elsewhere), I may venture to take it up once more, especially as Mr Mann’s note appears to me to be erroneous in one or two particulars, and to exhibit the triple weaknesses of a too narrowly legalistic outlook, an inadequate account of historical development, and a neglect of some of the relevant facts.

Furtum and Larceny

Anyone who studies side by side the Roman law of furtum and the English law of larceny must be struck by the fact that, whereas Roman thieves and English thieves behave much alike, Roman lawyers in discussing theft usually assume that a civil action is being brought, for money damages, but English lawyers are mainly concerned with criminal prosecution, leading to a fine, or imprisonment, or, in former times, to the gallows.

Was Sir Thomas More a “Roman Lawyer”?

Was Sir Thomas More a “Roman Lawyer”?

Liberty and the Common Law

In preparing the few and elementary observations which I am about to make to you tonight I have wondered if the title I chose was apt or suitable. The Common Law is generally described as the law of liberty, of freedom and of free peoples. It was a home-made product. In the eighteenth century, foreign lawyers called it an insular and barbarous system; they compared it to their own system of law, developed on the basis of Roman and Civil Law. Many centuries before, and long after Bracton's day, when other civilised European nations ‘received’ the Roman Law, England held back and stood aloof from the Reception. It must have been a near thing. It seems there could have been a Reception here if the Judges had been ecclesiastics, steeped in the Civil Law. But as it turned out they were laymen, and were content as they travelled the country, and in London as well, to adopt what we now know as the Case System, instead of the rules and categories of the Civil Law. Hence the method of threshing out problems by debate in Court, and later on the basis of written pleadings which we find in the Year Books. For present purposes, all I need observe is that the Civil Lawyer had a different idea of the relation of the state or the monarch to the individual from that of the Common Lawyer. To the Civil or Roman Lawyer, the dominant maxim was ‘quod placuit principi legis habet vigorem’; law was the will of the princeps. With this may be compared the rule expressed in Magna Carta in 1215: No freeman, it was there said, was to be taken or imprisoned or exiled or in any way destroyed save by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land. Whatever the exact application of that phrase in 1215, it became a text for fixing the relations between the subject and the State. Holdsworth quotes from the Year Book of 1441; the law is the highest English inheritance the King hath, for by the law he and all his subjects are ruled. That was the old medieval doctrine that all things are governed by law, either human or divine. That is the old doctrine of the supremacy of the law, which runs through the whole of English history, and which in the seventeenth century won the day against the un-English doctrine of the divine right of Kings and of their autocratic power over the persons and property of their subjects. The more detailed definition of what all that involved took time to work out. I need scarcely refer to the great cases in the eighteenth century in which the Judges asserted the right of subjects to freedom from arbitrary arrest as against the ministers of state and against the validity of a warrant to seize the papers of a person accused of publishing a seditious libel; in particular Leach v. Money (1765) 19 St. Tr. 1001; Entick v. Carrington (1765) 19 St. Tr. 1029; Wilkes v. Halifax (1769) 19 St. Tr. 1406. In this connexion may be noted Fox's Libel Act, 1792, which dealt with procedure, but fixed a substantive right to a trial by jury of the main issue in the cases it referred to.

A History of Mediœval Political Theory in the West. By R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle. Vol. II, The Political Theory of the Roman Lawyers and the Canonists, from the Tenth Century to the Thirteenth Century. By A. J. Carlyle. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1909. Pp. ix, 274.)

A History of Mediœval Political Theory in the West. By R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle. Vol. II, The Political Theory of the Roman Lawyers and the Canonists, from the Tenth Century to the Thirteenth Century. By A. J. Carlyle. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1909. Pp. ix, 274.) - Volume 4 Issue 4

<italic>A History of the Mediœval Political Theory in the West</italic>. By <sc>R. W. Carlyle</sc>, C.I.E., and <sc>A. J. Carlyle</sc>, M.A., Chaplain and Lecturer of University College, Oxford. Volume II. <italic>The Political Theory of the Roman Lawyers and the Canonists, from the Tenth Century to the Thirteenth Century</italic>. By A. J. Carlyle, M.A. (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1909.

A History of the Mediœval Political Theory in the West. By R. W. Carlyle, C.I.E., and A. J. Carlyle, M.A., Chaplain and Lecturer of University College, Oxford. Volume II. The Political Theory of the Roman Lawyers and the Canonists, from the Tenth Century to the Thirteenth Century. By A. J. Carlyle, M.A. (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1909. Pp. xix, 274.) Get access A History of the Mediœval Political Theory in the West. By Carlyle R. W., C.I.E., and Carlyle A. J., M.A., Chaplain and Lecturer of University College, Oxford. Volume II. The Political Theory of the Roman Lawyers and the Canonists, from the Tenth Century to the Thirteenth Century. By Carlyle A. J., M.A. (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1909. Pp. xix, 274.) James Sullivan James Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 15, Issue 4, July 1910, Pages 836–838, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/15.4.836 Published: 01 July 1910

Reviews of Books

Reviews of Books Get access A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West. By R. W. CARLYLE and A. J. CARLYLE. VoL II. The Political Theory of the Roman Lawyers and the Canonists, from the Tenth Century to the Thirteenth Century. By A. J. CARLYLE. (Edinburgh: Blackwood. 1909.) J. NEVILLE FIGGIS J. NEVILLE FIGGIS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume XXV, Issue XCIX, July 1910, Pages 561–564, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XXV.XCIX.561 Published: 01 July 1910

The Roman Lawyer: A Sketch

The Roman Lawyer: A Sketch