The Western Tradition of Private Law

I had the great pleasure of discussing the history of Private Law with Bruce L. Benson, the now retired, distinguished economic and legal scholar.  The rule of law, not of any man or group, is a fundamentally western tradition.  Conventionally, this is supposed to have been developed by the Greeks but, in fact, this is foundational to all those Indo-European civilizations whose aristocracies would have considered it most unmasculine to subjugate any free man.  The 'kings' of ancient Europe were only ever considered to be the first among equals and prized the company of those who opinions they respected; they recognized that others must be free if such respect and honour were to mean anything.  Bruce Benson describes the development of law in such societies, showing that the Germanic legal systems were customary and decentralized, judges discovering laws rationally rather than any central system arbitrarily legislating rules.  However, these were early influenced by the Church to create corrupt monopolies of judicial decision making and, thus, proper states.  These constitutional kings discovered the revenue that was available from claiming greater rights over disputes between citizens and soon began legislating the law to further these efforts.  The systems of Ireland and to a much greater extent, Iceland, were more systematically privatized and most interactions were governed by contracts.  Sadly, these too succumbed to the same fate as the Church took advantage of whatever customary practices remained and sought privileges, such as paying no taxes on land and requesting their own tax (the tithe) instead.  This expanding power would later corrupt absolutely.

Please enjoy, share, subscribe, donate and comment.