Stefan Vogenauer

AN EMPIRE OF LIGHT? LEARNING AND LAWMAKING IN THE HISTORY OF GERMAN LAW

JOHN Austin, having spent the winter term of 1827/28 in the idyllic and peaceful Rhenanian university town of Bonn, far away from the bustle of London and the irritating failures he had suffered at the chancery bar, was unrivalled in his admiration for the modern version of Roman law as it had been interpreted, refined and further developed by the German scholars of his time. It was, he exclaimed, “greatly and palpably superior, considered as a whole, to the law of England. Turning from the study of the English to the study of the Roman law, you escape from the empire of chaos and darkness, to a world that seems by comparison, the region of order and light”. How he longed to be as acknowledged and as influential as one of the great expositors of that law. “I was born out of time and place”, he is reported to have lamented, “I ought to have been a schoolman of the twelfth century—or a German professor”. His desire was rather understandable, given that the nineteenth century English law professors regarded themselves as “a feeble folk.

Problemas de la promulgación de una Constitución británica

De vez en cuando se apunta que seria mejor que Gran Bretana contase con una constitucion cuyos terminos se encontrasen en un documento impreso, conocido y accesible a todos los ciudadanos. La finalidad de este articulo es considerar la cuestion de la factibilidad, o, mejor dicho, los problemas que hay que resolver si se decide promulgar una Constitucion Britanica. El primer problema fundamental consiste en determinar que deberia incluirse en dicha constitucion, y, el segundo, decidir como deberia elaborarse, ratificarse y modificarse esa constitucion.

Law Journals in Nineteenth-Century England

A. INTRODUCTION B. BOUNDARIES (1) England and the United Kingdom (2) Law journals and other forms of legal literature (a) Collections of legislation (b) Collections of decisions (c) Textbooks, monographs and collections of essays (d) Newspapers (e) Periodicals (3) Law journals and other journals C. LAW JOURNALS BEFORE 1900: DATES AND DURATION D. CATEGORIES OF LAW JOURNAL (1) Practitioners’ reviews (2) Journals aimed at education (3) “Learned” journals E. SOME PRELIMINARY EXPLANATIONS (1) Economic and socio-historical factors (2) Legal policy factors: the era of law reform (3) The character of legal scholarship F. OUTLOOK AND SUMMARY (1) The rise of law journals in the twentieth century (2) Conclusion: England as a special case?