Judges, Legislators and Professors

On the basis of ten concrete examples the author shows by what process and for what historical reasons continental law and common law have come to be so different. In so doing van Caenegem provides a historical introduction to continental law understandable to readers familiar with the common law, and vice-versa. This study is derived from the professor's lectures at Cambridge in 1984-85, in which lawyers from Europe, Great Britain and the United States participated. Judges, Legislators and Professors does not follow the traditional path of describing the development of ideas, but tries a new approach by interpreting legal history as, to a large extent, EEthe result of a power struggle.

Part I. The Common Law is Different: Ten Illustrations: 1. The ambiguity of the term 'law'; 2. Appeal: a recent development; 3. English law is a 'seamless web'; 4. The rule of exclusion; 5. A land without a constitution?; 6. The consequences of parliamentary absolutism; 7. The haphazard development of criminal law; 8. Prosecution and verdict in criminal trials; 9. A law uncodified; Jurists are dispensable; Part II. The Mastery of the Law: Judges, Legislators and Professors: 10. Some facts; 11. Explanations: the 'national spirit'?; 12. Explanations: authoritarian Roman law and democratic England?; 13. Explanations: political history; Part III. The Divergent Paths of Common Law and Civil Law: 14. Common law and civil law: the parting of the ways; 15. The ways remain separate; 16. Which diverged from which?; Part VI. Which is Best, Case Law, Statute Law, Or Book Law: 17. The judges: amateurs and professionals; 18. The courts and their creators; 19. Codification: a weapon against the judiciary; 20. Law professors serve the powers that be; 21. Eight criteria of good law.