By: James G. Apple, Editor-in-Chief, International
Judicial Monitor and President.l International Judicial Academy
When he was 39 years old, in 1861, Henry James Sumner Maine
published a collection of lectures he had delivered at the University of
Cambridge, where he was a professor of civil law, and at one of the inns of
court in London. The collected essays carried with them a long name: Ancient
Law: Its Connection With the Early History of Society and Its Relation to
Modern Ideas. If he had written nothing further or accomplished nothing
else, he would have been deemed worthy for inclusion in any list of major
contributors to international law. One commentator wrote of this singular
publication: "the book by which his reputation was made at one stroke.”
Ancient Law, its abbreviated common name, was
exceptional and provides us with an indication of its brilliance and usefulness
in a way other than its content, in that in it he made no reference to
authorities on which he relied, and did not cite any supporting evidence or
materials in footnotes or end notes for its conclusions. Such an unusual
approach in legal writing was probably as much taboo in his day as it is in the
present day. Careful examination of his writings has shown that he used as the
bases for at least some of his observations and conclusions Roman law, Indian
law, and the laws of European legal systems, both western and eastern. Thus the
advent of Ancient Law marks the beginning of the academic discipline
known as comparative law (a branch of international law) and Maine as its
creator.
Sir Henry Maine (he was knighted in 1871) was born in
Scotland in the county of Roxburgh and town of Kelso, in 1822. His initial
formal education was at Christ’s Hospital, from where he entered Pembroke
College,
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