CONSERVATIVE ENGLAND

77 A continental lawyer who crosses the Channel enters another world. Exegesis of a civil code is unknown, since English law is not codified. Academic Begriffsjurisprudenz is also unknown, since until recently there were no law faculties and even nowadays the role of scholarship in legal practice is very modest.

²⁸ P. Heck, Tnteressenjurisprudenz und Gesetztreue*, Deutsche Juristenzeitung (1905), col. 1140-2; idem., â€?Was ist diejenige Begriffsjurisprudenz die wir bekampfen?’, ibid. (1909), col. 1019-24.

»» �The purpose of law.’Jhering’s work was translated into French by O. de Meulenare, this particular work as L’(volution du droit (Paris, 1901).

5° �The spirit of Roman law at different stages of its development.’

5^, �The struggle for law.’ s’ Here the influence of the sociologist Auguste Comte is clear, and his rejection of any metaphysical principle in favour of observation and experience.

Ages. It is a paradox that the most economically and socially advanced nation in the world had only a medieval legal system. Modernization of the law came late and did not alter the basic characteristics of the Common Law, in spite of Jeremy Bentham’s virulent attacks on it. So civil law was not codified, but remained what it had been for centuries, a system based on custom and thousands of cases, and progressively developed by case law. The dichotomy between Common Law and statute was maintained.

The role and prestige of judges remained very significant, and the authority of their judgments considerable.

Universities and law professors played a modest part, and their prestige was low. Although they have now risen from a low point in the nineteenth century, the secondary importance of universities is characteristic of the English legal world. University teaching of law (at least English law) began late, at Oxford, Cambridge and London in the second half of the nineteenth century, and in the provincial universities only after the First World War. The delay was partly due to the attitude of the universities, which considered the teaching of law barely respectable, and thought its place was not in an academic context but in professional or technical education. The professional organizations too were partly responsible for the delay, since their preference was to found practical law schools, and they did in fact found several. Finally, in the courts there was a deep- seated mistrust of academic and theoretical legal education. Tradi­tional judges favoured a general university education, for instance in history or politics, followed by a professional education in the Inns of Court or the schools of the Law Society.

The work of Parliament was not limited to abrogation of anti­quated statutes; it also produced positive results. In no area was this more spectacular than in the court system and in civil procedure. It must be emphasized that in Common Law any important modifica­tion in procedure inevitably involved a change in substantive law. The Common Law had developed as a system based on the �forms of action’, each form being initiated by a particular writ and each following its own rules. This system remained essentially in place until the nineteenth century so that an action, like a Roman actio, could not be initiated unless the appropriate writ existed. Over the centuries, new writs had been created and others had fallen into disuse, giving a total, around 1830, of nearly seventy writs. When the legislature abolished the forms of action, it therefore overturned the procedural basis of Common Law. At the same time the rather disorderly system of courts and tribunals which had developed since the Middle Ages was replaced by a more systematic hierarchy of higher and lower courts. The main elements of the court reform were the following.

In 1846 county courts were created for minor cases. For the more important cases, the various courts of medieval origin (including the church courts) were replaced by a central High Court of Justice sitting at first instance, and a Court of Appeal.

But revision does not mean reduction: the third edition GiStatuUsTevised (1950) is in thirty- two volumes. subordinate to the House of Lords, which operates not as a cour de cassation but instead as a second court of appeal (this double appeal is a peculiarity of the English legal system). By the Appellate Jurisdic­tion Act 1876 the judicial activity of the House of Lords was restricted to those members who were professional lawyers (Law Lords). There was a fundamental modernization of the law of procedure. The old forms of action were abolished,⁴' and replaced by a single, less formal, procedure. Henceforth process was initiated by a uniform writ, which stated the claim simply, in terms which were neither prescribed nor technical. The difference between the procedures in Equity and in Common Law also disappeared. The new procedure made use of elements of both systems, but the principles of Equity were decisive. It is true that the jury in civil cases was taken from the Common Law, but its role was sharply reduced until it eventually became non-existent in practice. The 1875 Act also made it possible to codify the rules of procedure, by means of detailed regulations made by the courts themselves {Rules of Court).

The democratic significance of these reforms is obvious, since the procedural rules were extremely technical and one of the areas of English law least accessible to the public. Intellectual democratiza­tion, however, was not accompanied by any financial democratiza­tion, and the expenses of process remain exorbitant.

The great reforms of the nineteenth century also introduced a modern appeal procedure for the first time. This was of the Roman and continental type, which allowed a new inquiry into the facts. Prior to this Common Law had provided only a restricted procedure for revision of an error committed at first instance.

Reform of the civil law also began, but on a much more modest scale. The new legislation dealt only with specific areas which had somehow engaged public attention. One example is the statutes of 1870 and 1882 providing that the income and personal property of a

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