Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION A Survey of the course of development of European jurisprudence necessarily presents methods and points of view somewhat remote from Anglo-American experience. This selection of great jurists of the world has been made with particular reference to international repute. But an international reputation as a jurist does not necessarily signify a conspicuous influence upon the actual development of any national system of law, and a selection made on such a basis passes over jurists who, upon all other grounds, are unquestionably pre-eminent. Lord Mansfield was one of the greatest jurists known to legal history, although his influence was exclusively national. The selection may also seem to lend-undue prominence to doctrinal and institutional writers as compared with jurists whose distinction was attained in the practical administration of justice. In countries where the formulation of legal principles has been mainly the work of judges, and largely embodied in judicial opinions, the conspicuous type of jurist is the judge. On the continent of Europe, however, legal development took another course, and legal literature, systematically pursued as a branch of University study, obtained a direct and controlling influence upon the decisions of the courts. In jurisprudence, as in theology, all roads lead to Rome. The imposing fabric of Roman law received the impress of those qualities which have given it such enduring vitality during the early period of the Empire, when the Roman jurists were at once the makers, the expounders, and the administrators of law for the civilized world. Roman civil law had already been liberalized and vitalized by the jus gentium. The appointment of a praetor peregrinus in 246 B.c. was designed to mitigate the exclu- siveness of the jus civile...