English law

The Roman heres, in fact, united the characters of the English Executor and residuary legatee:

Bequest (which in English law is related to personality as devise to realty) has been used in connexion with legacies, i.

By English law, the age at which a person was competent to make a will was formerly the same as by Roman law, namely, 12 years for females, 14 years for males;

The theoretical descent of Roman jurisprudence from a code, the theoretical ascription of English law to immemorial unwritten tradition, were the chief reasons why the development of their system differed from the development of ours.

English case-law is sometimes spoken of as unwritten, and there are some English theorists who assure us that if a code of English jurisprudence were prepared, we should be turning unwritten law into written—a conversion, as they insist, if not of doubtful policy, at all events of the greatest seriousness.

I may add that an Englishman should be better able than a foreigner to appreciate the historical fact that the “Themistes” preceded any conception of law, because, amid the many inconsistent theories which prevail concerning the character of English jurisprudence, the most popular, or at all events the one which most affects practice, is certainly a theory which assumes that adjudged cases and pre …

The origin, therefore, of a body of law, regarded by some of the most civilised societies of mankind as the perfection of reason, and spoken of by continental lawyers with what Englishmen at all events regard as extravagance of praise, is to be sought in this most ancient belief that law, custom, and judicature were all necessarily and naturally subject to correction by the supreme authority of the King.

’ a formula which sometimes puzzles the English lawyer, from its want of correspondence with anything which he finds among the oldest rules of English law.

The distinction between temerity and consciousness of blame, a distinction pervading human nature, and applicable to every species of misbehaviour, is scarce so much as known to the English law.

The English law had for centuries used the word “free” as describing persons possessing citizenship, or some other franchise or peculiar privilege—as distinguished from aliens, and persons not possessed of such franchise or privilege.