CHAPTER VIII 
INTRODUCTION 
In approaching the study of Anglo-American law from the 
historical standpoint, 20 one discovers first a period of no law. 
In this period every man, or at least the head of the family, 
was a law unto himself. Undoubtedly in this period there 
were certain forms of conduct which were generally regarded 
as wrongful, but there was no means of redress therefor other 
than vengeance and self-help, and unregulated vengeance and 
self-help were liable to cause as many wrongs as they pre- 
vented. The result was a state of society where private war- 
fare was the usual order. Under such conditions human prog- 
ress was practically impossible, and the immediate predicament 
of the race was unendurable. To the credit of the race it 
may be said that it has evolved one plan after another to 
improve its condition, until the present social order has been 
reached, and it probably will continue to plan for its improve- 
ment until new and better social orders appear. 
In English history the boundaries of this period of no 
law are unknown. It began at least back as far as Neolithic 
men (Iberians) and Palaeolithic men (Eskimos) and it prob- 
ably continued down thru the times of the Celts and Britons, 
Gauls and Belgians (Goidels), and perhaps thru the times of 
the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles (who together became the 
English), 449-584. But whatever were the boundaries of the 
period of no law and whatever other legal development may 
have occurred in England, the period of the Roman occupancy 
(55 B.C. to 410 A.D.) will have to be counted out. During 
a part of the time of the Roman occupancy of Britain, if not 
thru most of it, the Roman law was applied. This was not 
20 Pound, “The End of Law as Developed in Legal Rules and Doctrines, and in 
Juristic Thought”, 27 Harv. L. Rev. 195, 605, and 30 Harv. L. Rev. 201 ; Select Essays 
in Anglo-American Legal History; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Latv ; 
Maitland and Montague, Sketch of English Legal History; Dean, The Student's Legal 
History; Jenks, Short History of English Law; Holdsworth, History of English Laiv ; 
Walsh, History of English and American Law; Ames, Lectures on Legal History; 
Holmes, The Common Law; Plucknett, Statutes and their Interpretation in the Four- 
teenth Century; Langdell, Equity Pleading; Spence, Equitable Jurisdiction; Digby, His- 
tory of the Law of Real Property; Leake, Law of Property in Land; Thayer, Pre- 
liminary Treatise on Evidence; Street, Foundations of Legal Liability; Taylor, Origin 
and Growth of the English Constitution ; Stubbs, Select Charters Illustrative of English 
Constitutional History. 
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