Course in Comparative Jurisprudence (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Howe, William Wirt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 133128306X ISBN 13: 9781331283065

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from Course in Comparative Jurisprudence

Uses and Methods of the Study of Comparative J urispru dence and Legal History - Law, a science in its theory and an art in its application, and the more exact our knowledge of it is as a science the more precise and effective will he its applica tion as an art. Jurisprudence has been developed from archaic times by a very slow but distinctly continuous growth. We need not undervalue the labors of analytical jurists, but the fact remains that the historical method is indispensable and becomes the more so as modern research is extended into the origin of all kinds of human life and human institutions. Reference to the Views of Professor Paulsen, of Berlin, that law is not an invention of jurists and legislators, but has grown up with the social life of the people as the external form of their union. Originally it is custom; then at a certain stage of de velopment it is separated from the collection of universal oblig atory forms of life and action, and becomes a separate field of social compulsion. From that stage on it becomes possibly an object of conscious consideration, and may be even expressed in written statutes and codes and come to look like an artificial product; but whoever considers the subject historically will easily observe that the legal system as a whole is not made. All that is done is to incorporate in a system what has been current and traditional. Occasionally slight adaptations to the changing life and conditions of the people are made. We may say of the legal codes, then, they are not made; they grow. Primitive people did not meet in convention and say, Let us make a constitution, a civil code, and a code of practice. Such things may be said sometimes todav in communities which have behind them thousands of years of legal experience; but even then they can make very little that is new, but generally rearrange and adapt what is immemorially old. If we wish to understand their work fully we must studv its sources. As a matter of psychology merely, the work of comparing laws and institutions is very necessary, for the only way to perceive any.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 133128306X
• ISBN 13: 9781331283065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 56