The Unity of Civilization

s fall in battle. Their uncle takes up the government and publishes an edict that no one shall give burial to the traitor who has borne arms against his native land. The obligation to g

answers Antigone, 'for it was not Zeus that published me that edict; not such are the laws set among men by the Justice who dwells with the Gods below; nor deemed I that thy decrees were of such fo

upreme and binding on all men, eternal,

emporary of Sophocles. He has been telling how Cambyses, king of the Persians, has been wanto

e shown by many proofs, and above all by this story. For when Darius was king he called to him the Greeks who were at his court and asked them, 'How much money would you take to eat your fathers when they die?' And they answered that they would not do this at any price. After this Darius called the men of an Indian tribe called the Kallatiai, who eat their parents

and gods, but a capricious monarch

tificial arrangements made by mankind with the constancy and simplicity of nature. We speak of nature and convention

ptions or modifications) by the English courts to all persons, be they English or aliens, who come before them. But Athenian law is not in this sense the law of Athens, nor, to begin with, is Roman law the law of Rome. What we find is a law of Athenian or Roman citizens. The stranger to the city is a stranger to its law. As a matter of principle he is without ri

is the theory of th

broad outlines the principle is sufficiently borne out by the exceptions which were necessary to make human intercourse possible. The stranger within your gates is protected just because he is within your gates, and you throw your protection about him, as is indeed your duty, for suppliants and strangers come from Zeus. The foreigner, even at a distance, may have a citizen as representative who can and

ng commerce which came from all parts of the Mediterranean called for something more than a mere admission to treaty privileges. A special officer was from henceforth appointed to deal

oreigner would hardly know them, and if he did, his alien hand could not effectively do the prescribed acts nor his alien mouth speak the almost sacred words. The answer was that behind the forms of the law of this city or that, there was 'a law of the men of all nations'. The common elements in the ordinary transactions of life, in whatever form they were

awn from a comparison of foreign laws with which the Romans were brought into contact. In turn it reacted upon the more narrow law of Roman citizens (ius civile), broadening its conceptions and enabling it

lication of a uniform system of law throughout what was then the civilized world, though beneath an apparent uniformity local traditions and customs survived to the end, at any rate in the ea

ariness of the city law. To this ideal conception the Roman law of the men of all nations gave a body and a reality. Stoicism became the 'established' philosophy of Rome, and Roman lawyers well-nigh identified the 'ius gentium' with the ideal law of nature, describing it as that which natural reason has established among all men. Yet for at least one of the great classical lawyers, whose words have been enshrined in Justinian's leg

y, if they would, force their laws upon the conquered inhabitants. Among these the old civilization lingered on in a degenerate form, and with it the Roman law. One of the first things that happened was that the conquerors drew up for their Roman subjects short codes of the Roman law as it survived in a debased form, as they drew up statements of their own law for their followers. For a long time each man, according to the community to which he belo

or as between him and his lord, may extend no further than a very small area, such as in England we call a manor. The law by which great men held their land from a king, though perhaps not uniform throughout the kingdom, will cover a much larger area. The fact that a great man may hold land in far di

Westminster or by judges sent by him to the counties, secured the formation of an English Common Law which left comparatively little play for local custom, and which at an early time became strong enough to resist attempts to introduce foreign law. As early as the time of Henry III the baron

of the Revolution. In Germany the shadowy unity of the Holy Roman Empire was never enough to afford any effective central administration of justice. National law in the strict sense was impossible

ed a tradition which was ever ready to exert an influence. It is not only in law courts that law is learnt and developed. Transactions have to be drawn up in writing, and will largely be made in Latin, and founded on precedents. The grants of land to and from ecclesiastical bodies especially will be in a form which borrows much from Roman or romanesque models; and they will form models for the transactions of others. Even the formulation of native law in the early codes will be carried out by men who know of no written law except the Roman. In the twelfth century Roman law becomes a subject of University study throughout Western Europe, in

tical matters, but dealt or attempted to deal with other things, such as marriage and the disposition of the goods of the deceased. Our own law of marriage and divorce, and of probate of wills, has a history which goes back to the ecclesiastical law of the Middle Ag

iddle Ages, the growth of absolute monarchical power, the centralization of government, all favoured the tendency. Roman law contained doctrines eminently pleasing to an absolute ruler, e.g. 'the decision of the monarch has the force of law'. In Germany above all, where law was divided into countless local customs, the movement had its fullest effect. Roman law comes to be the law which is to be applied in the absence of positive enactment or justifiable custom. The native law finds itself driven to plead for its life, and is lucky if it can satisfy the conditions which are required

t that there is in every State a sovereign power which can make and unmake the law at its pleasure makes possible the creation of a uniform law for all the subjects of a State, and so far as the State coincides with the nation, makes for the creation of a national unity in law. Thus Frederick the Great gave a code to Prussia, thus Napoleon gave France a code which swept away the diversities of the provincial customs; yet it served more than merely national purposes, for it found its way not only into the countries conquered by him, where it survived his conquests, but even into lands where he never held sway. Our French fellow-citizens in Quebec use an adaptation of it as a statement of their law. It took longer before Germany as a whole obtained a uniformity of law. The

ught their law with them. To-day English law, modified no doubt by State and Federal legislation, is the Common Law of the great republic of the United States. The colonies which still remain within our Empire are territories of the English law, s

nd yet we must not make too much of this division. In the first place it cuts across national boundaries. It unites us with the United States of America, it separates us from some of our own co

ver been lost sight of. It is one of the inheritances of the Roman law tradition. Alike in the Middle Ages, and since their close, it has been the subject of speculation and an influence guiding the legislator, the thinker, and the administrator of law. There is a whole literature upon it on the Continent. It bulks pretty largely in Blackstone: you can see its influence on the judges of the eighteenth century in this cou

the main, amid national and individual diversity and conflict they are common ends, law has been formed for their attainment. On the whole what men have asked law to do for them has been the same at any given stage in civilization. The eighteenth century

s of law known as Public an

ace abroad, and therefore we will treat it as if it had never happened. On the other hand it will not do for the Court to apply simply its own law. Grave injustice would be done, for instance, if a transaction made on the faith of law which will give a certain effect to it, were treated as made under another law which will give it a different effect or no effect at all. For this reason the Courts of every country have formed rules (sometimes called Private International Law; sometimes, and as some hold, more properly, called

Reformation showed that even sovereign powers ought to conform to some rules of conduct. It has been the work in its origin of writers and teachers of law, and has been built up more recently by agreement between States. Unlike the law between man and man, which modern states enforce by organized compulsion, there is no standing organization whose business it is to see that it is kept. It is not true to say that for this reason it is not law at all, for in primitive times the recognized rules of private law were enforced not by Sta

FOR RE

e Austinian Theo

cient Law

story of English Law. Ca

in Law. Home University Li

Mediaeval Europe. Harper's

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tigone, 449-57 (Je

odotus,