620 PRIVATE LAW 



scheid, may be mentioned as either constituting legal systems, or 

 as having contributed powerfully to their formation. On the other 

 hand, a system may or may not be coextensive with political juris- 

 diction. In England for a long time common and civil law had 

 each its province of application; to-day the two systems ignore 

 international boundaries; the Mahommedan law spreads over 

 numerous countries, and the French Code of Commerce furnishes 

 a system of commercial law to most Latin nations. The law as a sys- 

 tem is a body of reasoned principles, and not of sovereign com- 

 mands. 



In any system of private law it is possible to differentiate, with 

 tolerable clearness, principles and institutions according as they are 

 strongly marked by considerations of public policy, or are mainly 

 abstract and technical in their character. 



It is not a derogation to the dignity of legal science to assert that 

 the bulk of its work has always been given to the production of rules 

 of the latter category. Jurisprudence and in this it differs from 

 political economy and sociology is the direct outgrowth of a 

 practical demand. It is its business to minister to the dispensation 

 of justice, and the justice of the courts, in the vast majority of the 

 cases in which it calls for constructive legal work, has to deal with 

 close controversies turning on the precise demarkation and boundary 

 lines of institutions and principles, and taking their essential nature 

 and larger aspects for granted. Not unnaturally the character of 

 the private law is dominated by the habitual trend of professional 

 thought, and this again is controlled by the exigencies of professional 

 practice. The result is the dry and colorless complexion of the 

 private law with which we are sufficiently familiar. 



This aspect of the law is accentuated where it is developed chiefly, 

 perhaps almost exclusively, through its administration, as was the 

 case in Rome and in England. The main characteristic of such a 

 system is apt to lie in the wealth and refinement of its technical 

 distinctions, and in its consequent availability as an arsenal of 

 weapons for the forensic contest. It is true that the eulogists of 

 the common law dwelled mainly upon its fundamental pohcy in 

 protecting the liberties of the subject; but this was simply an iden- 

 tification of the common law with the English constitution for the 

 purpose of making a contrast with the countries of the civil law 

 which were formerly living under more or less * despotic govern- 

 ments. 



The general attitude of the professional mind toward technical 

 problems, and, therefore, the essential character of legal science, is 

 the same in different systems, although the controlling agencies of 

 development may differ considerably. Juristic authority in Rome 

 was lodged with professional advisers, in England with the courts, 



