Probably the largest gathering of members of the legal profession which has ever taken place in the Far East assembled at the Shanghai Club—on the 8th instant when the inaugural dinner of the Far Eastern American Bar ion was held. Mr.
Arthur Bassett was toastmaster and amonget those sitting with him at! the top of the table were the Hon.
8. Lobingier, Judge of the American Court for China, Sir Havilland de Sausmarez, Judge, and Mr, F. 8. A. Bourne o.u.0., Assistant Judge, of H. M. Supreme Court.
Alter dinner, Mr. Bassett briefly surveyed recent legislation in the United States and referred to the present importance of international law. He then called upon Judge Lobingier.
In his inaugural address as Pre sident of the Association, Judge Lobingier dealt with the influence of Roman Law upon Anglo-American jurisprudence. He said that there had been many national systems of law which had grown and declined with the nations tha! produced them, never extending be and.
But there had been only thr.
world legal systems, thes which had been adopted other than the—originatis nations and countries. In order were the Roman, and the Anglo-Aueriean. Of these the first_ was not only the oldest; it was also a considerable extent a soures of the others as well as of some which could not be called world systems.
The Arabian conquerors who succeeded in spreading the law as well as the faith of Islam over a large portion of the globe came in contact with the Roman law of the eastern empire and were compelled to borrow from it because their own system was too crude and pri to meet the new conditions which their conquests produced. The: amount of real Roman law which had found its way into the Moslem aystem was rather surprising those who had not specially—in. vestigated the subject.
The relation of the Roman law to the third of there world systems) was a subject upon which there was a difference of opinion, due doubt. less to the varying degrees of attention given thereto.
But in order to arrive at correct results on this point they should not rely entirely upon opinions, Let them determine, if possible, by' a brief analysis of the Anglo American legal system itself, how far it was indebted to Roman sources. They might survey that system under the following head (1) persons; (2) obligations; property; (4) crimes; (5) procedure.
(1) In the law of persons they would consider first that of marriage. Here they found the rues In the law of parent and child they were indebted to the Roman law for the very important, not to say humane, practices of legitimation and adoption so far as they had them. True, these were borrowed by legislative, instead of judicial enactments, but they were here wnsidering a source of the Anglo-
American law as a whole and not any special form or stage thereof.
The law of guardianship (tutela) was worked out very fully among the Romans. Just how much of this had come into their own law might be difficult to say. But the Chancellor's jurisdiction in such matters was very similar to the Pretor's and the Corpus Juri observed Mr. Spence, "has been occasionally consulted, if not resorted to as an authority" thereon. As to the remaining one of the domestic relations" they had this statement from Mr. Justi Holmes: the Roman Taw the Haman ing of austen" aad "tervaat, Blast se eoeare the influewee of
the evidence of it is to be found in every. book which has been written for the last five d years. It han been stated already that we still repeat the reasoning of the Roman la it the present di (2) Coming to obligations (or they would say in English law, torts and contracts) they found it everywhere conceded that the iden of earnest,' "in connexion with contracts, was taken from the Story and said Brett, Smith, 1 C: P.D. 428, 45 3 ud the judgement of Tord Holt in Coges r. Bernard can doubt that the Common Law of England as to ailments ix founded upon, though it has exactly adopted. the Roman law. 1 trae that Lord Holt rests as for auth solely on Bracton; but the treating
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