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 THE GREEN BAG

THE CIVIL AND THE COMMON LAW IN THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE BY HON. EMLIN MCCLAIN PERHAPS it may be difficult to arouse of generals in the Roman streets and rich any great enthusiasm over the results revenues were being poured into the Roman of a contest between two rival systems of city from these remote regions, it is but just law, but that the English law and the to remember, Rome was giving to her con Roman law have been rival systems cannot quered provinces a return in stable governhave escaped the attention of even the most ment, public works, good roads, civilized liv casual student of the course of legal events. ing, and some knowledge of literature and The Roman, or, more generally speaking, art. These Roman influences and institu the civil law, followed first the conquests tions had become so established and forti of the Roman arms, and then the advance fied in the different parts of Europe that ment of Roman civilization, not only through they survived the decline of the Roman the countries conquered and possessed by military power in the third and fourth cen the Latin races, but through the great turies, and remained as essential and domi regions of northern Europe, over which the nant features of the barbarian governments Teutonic races have been dominant. The set up like fragments, as it were, of the Code, the Digest, and the Institutes, com Roman Empire, which was crumbling to piled by Tribonian and his associates for decay. Theodoric, among the Goths, made the Roman Emperor Justinian, ruling, how the principles of the civil law the basis of ever, at Constantinople, while his dominions his code, when the spread of learning first in Italy and the Roman city were in the enabled barbarian rulers to publish in a possession of barbarians, are to-day the sub civilized tongue the laws of their people; ject of study as furnishing the foundation so did Alaric, and a dozen other leaders of of the system of jurisprudence not only in different tribes of barbarians, who had come Italy and Spain and France and the Neth within the reach of the Roman influence. But in the remote northwestern corner erlands and Austria, which were once actu ally Roman provinces, but also in Prussia of Europe, along the shores of the inhospita and Scandinavia and Russia, remote regions ble and tempestuous North Sea, in regions into which the Roman arms never actually rendered inaccessible to the Roman legions were carried. Indeed, it would seem that by interminable forests and impassable mo the civil law might have achieved universal rasses, were those inconspicuous, and to the Romans unknown, Teutonic tribes which we recognition as an essential element of civili zation, as the very spirit of jurisprudence have been in the habit of designating, in itself, had it not been for a circumstance, common parlance, as the Angles, the Sax which may almost be called an historical ons, and the Jutes, who, while yet untouched by any knowledge of Roman institutions, accident. At the beginning of the Christian era Roman learning, or the Christian religion, Roman legions were being led by Julius which was spreading in the wake of Roman Cassar into Gaul and into Britain, and by civilization, migrated from their inhospita other successful generals into all the regions ble shores to the southeastern coast of the surrounding the immediate domain of the island of Great Britain, and, driving back Roman state. While trophies and captives the Celtic occupants of the territory, set up were being brought back from the East and little tribal governments, purely Teutonic the North and the West to grace the triumphs in their institutions and religion. So typical