Law

From Encyclopediak

Law, the will of the State concerning the civic conduct of those under its authority. In the nature and development of law three things stand revealed namely, the nature, the functions and the history of government. For the existence of law there is needed in all cases a community capable of having a will of its own and a clearly recognized body of rules to which that community has by enactment or custom given character and life. The nature of each country and state, therefore, will be reflected in its law.

DEVELOPMENT OF LAW. The development of law comes from two sources, custom and religion. In the earliest times custom and religion were almost indistinguishable. A people's customs bear the likeness of their religion thus the earliest law of Rome was little more than a body of technical religious rules.

LAWS OF MOSES. The great Jewish historian and lawgiver Moses is considered the author of the first five books of the Old Testament, collectively called the Pentateuch. The laws herein given, with the Ten Commandments, form the basis of all moral and legal codes.

ROMAN AND ENGLISH LAW. Roman law and English law are peculiar among the legal systems of western Europe for the individuality of their development. Roman law received its philosophy from Greece, and it has been said that the English common law has gone with Englishmen to the ends of the world, but both English and Roman law have been much less touched and colored by outside influence than other systems. Each has, in its turn, however, presented to the world what may be taken as a picture of the natural, the normal and untrammeled evolution of law.

LAW IN THE MIDDLE AGES. In the 15th century Irnerius, a famous jurist of Bologna, revised Roman law. This revision and the work of Pufendorf, an eminent German publicist, on the elements of jurisprudence, have had no small influence on the laws of the present day. Then followed Coke and Blackstone, the eminent English lawyers, who, with others, were famous as lawmakers and interpreters of the early codes. In Germanic law it was the object apparently to give effect to individual worth and liberty rather than to build a dominant community. The Teutonic hundred-moots, for example, were the popular assemblies which tried cases under the early polity of their ancestors, and the people themselves declared what law was and how it should be applied. The Scotch law has largely drawn its principles and nomenclature from Roman law.

JUSTINIAN CODE. In 528 the Emperor Justinian appointed ten persons as a commission to compile a code incorporating the constitutions, rescripts and edicts. The work was finished in 14 months and it was then declared that the new code should supersede the older compilations. The code of Justinian is of great importance for law and Church history, as many edicts of the Christian emperors concerned questions of Church and State. Among the famous Roman lawgivers were Cicero, Caesar, Pliny and Marcus Aurelius, whose rules of civil law laid the foundation for Justinian's work.

CODE NAPOLEON. The last great codification of French law was adopted in France in the 19th century. There were five codes namely, the Code Civil, published in 1804 the Code de Procedure Civile, published in 1806 the Code de Commerce, published in 1807 the Code d Instruction Criminelle, published in 1808 and the Code Penal, published in 1810. By way of eminence the first was called Code Napoleon by a law of Sept. 3, 1807. At the Restoration its name was changed back to Code Civil and during the time of the Second Empire it was again called Code Napoleon. The first book is entitled Of Persons and treats of civil rights, of domicile, marriages, divorce, relations of father and son, guardianship and judicial power. The second book is entitled Of Property and treats of ownership and the distinctions of property. The third treats of the different modes of acquiring property. Under the First Empire the adoption of the Code Napoleon was made obligatory on all the countries subject to the French, and in the United States it was a model for the code of Louisiana.

AMERICAN LAW. The laws of the United States rest at bottom on the same foundation as those of England namely, the English common law as it existed in the 17th century. New Mexico, Louisiana and the acquisitions following the Spanish-American War of 1898 are about the only exceptions worth noting. These derive most of their law from France and Spain, and thus remotely from the principles of Roman jurisprudence, but these laws have been greatly modified since coming under the United States Government. It is the right of each state, however, to regulate at its pleasure the general relations of persons within its territory to each other, as well as all rights to property subject to its jurisdiction. The trial courts follow in general the practice of the state in which they sit, as to procedure in cases of common-law character. The public statutes of the United States are to be found in the Revised Statutes of 1873 and in the Statutes at Large enacted by each Congress. Municipal subdivisions of a state generally have authority from the legislature to make by-laws or ordinances on subjects having the character of a local law, with appropriate sanctions, commonly by fine or forfeiture. Law in the United States is constantly being changed by legislature to meet new phases of state government, and upon the character of the state government depends the character of the nation as a whole.