Civil Law and the Common Law a World Survey

Authors

R W. Lee, McGill University, Montreal

Abstract

In universities and other seats of learning, where men devote themselves to the pursuit of truth, certain great events or movements in the world's history claim attention as essentially and always proper subjects of investigation. Whatever the future may bring, we can hardly suppose a time when the art of Greece, the literature of England, the religions of the East will not be studied. Nor before an assembly of lawyers is it necessary to urge the claims of a great system of law as a subject which may well engage the amplest resources of the human intellect. For many centuries the Law of Rome has occupied a foremost place in the universities of the continent of Europe. The study of the Common Law has in recent years made famous the law schools of America. In the English universities the Civil Law and the Common Law are studied side by side. It is claimed for this method that the student who pursues it, habituated to the comparison of two great systems of law, acquires a deeper insight into legal principles, lays the foundations of his knowledge wider and perhaps surer than might be the case, if he concentrated his attention upon the Roman Law, or upon the Common Law alone. Indeed, the science of Comparative Jurisprudence, though in theory it surveys the legal institutions of all mankind and of all ages, in fact draws its inferences principally from the study of these two systems.

Recommended Citation

R W. Lee, Civil Law and the Common Law a World Survey, 14 Mich. L. Rev. 89 (1915).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol14/iss2/1