this book is an intro to the Western secular legal tradition, common + civil law

the law “establish[es] a framework for the conduct of almost all social, political, and economic activity”

what is the law?

1. “a set of universal moral principles in accordance with nature” (espoused by natural lawyers)
2. “a collection of valid rules, commands, or norms that may lack any moral content” (legal positivists)

first general codes appeared around 3000 BC

• Hammurabi’s code 1760 BC
• early lawmaking by Athenian statesman Solon in 6th c BC (one of Seven Wise Men)
• period of classical jurists in Rome between 1st c BC to 3rd c AD = more sophisticated law emerged
• Justinian ordered these texts in 529 AD to be codified into Corpus Juris Civilis
  • 600 years later Europeans built on this foundation — how Roman civil law became basis of continental law
• Napoleonic code of 1804 replaced by code more brief, accessible, comprehensive
  • spread to Western Europe, Southern Europe, then Latin America
• German law developed in 1900 was more technical & abstract
  • influential in China, Japan, Taiwan, Greece, Baltic states
• Roman Catholic Church “has the longest, continuously operating legal system in the Western world”

Western legal tradition’s features:

1. clear demarcation between legal institutions and other institutions with legal authority of former exerting supremacy over political institutions
2. nature of legal doctrine made up of principal source of law + basis of legal training & practice