"Common law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... form that the Roman law became the common law of Europe; and when, four centuries later, other sources came to be added to it, the Corpus Juris of the school of Bologna had been so universally received, and so long established as a basis of practice, that the new discoveries remained in the domain ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... In common law, the day is now supposed among lawyers to be from six in the morning to seven at night for service of notices; in Chancery till eight at night. And a service after such times at night {372} would be counted as good only for the next day. In the case of Liffin v. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... arguments, rather tedious. He liked to go out into side-paths and to discourse of matters not material to the issue but suggested to him as he went along. He had a curious fashion of using the ancient nomenclature of the Common law where it had passed out of the knowledge even of most lawyers and the comprehension of common men. He would begin his appeal to the jury in some case where a fraud had been attempted on his client, by saying, "Gentlemen, the law abhorreth covin." He was a lawyer everywhere. His world ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the management of all their several properties in the hands of a board of trustees. The powers of this board and its relation to the owners of the various properties are ingeniously devised to evade the common law, which declares that contracts in restraint of competition are against public policy, ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... being no longer able to defend themselves, they were ruthlessly and savagely plundered; and fifty years later the Court of King's Bench gravely held that a royal grant of a monopoly had always been bad at common law.[4] ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... greater mistake than to make politeness a mere matter of arbitrary forms. It has as real and permanent a foundation in the nature and relations of men and women, as have government and the common law. The civil code is not more binding upon us than is the code of civility. Portions of the former become, from time to time, inoperative—mere dead letters on the statute-book, on account of the conditions on which they were founded ceasing to exist; and many ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... Robespierre, Yes, I'll draw my conclusion; and it is against your self-confidence as a woman, who, having reached the age of thirty-two without a suspicion of what love is, cannot admit that at this late date she may be subjected to the common law." ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... period of time in his own imagination, (not what the law defines, but merely what the convenience of his client suggests,) by which he would cut off at one stroke all those freedoms which are the dearest privileges of your corporation,—which the Common Law authorizes,—which your magistrates are compelled to grant,—which come duly authenticated into this court,—and are saved in the clearest words, and with the most religious care and tenderness, in that very act of Parliament which was made to regulate the elections by freemen, and to prevent all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... for many centuries and in this country from the beginning, to regulate rates on ferries, charges at inns, and similar public enterprises, and that it had never been thought that such action deprived persons of property without due process of law. In other words, the established common law, at the time of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, did not look upon rate regulation as a deprivation of property. The Court, therefore, declared the Illinois warehouse law constitutional, and in doing so ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... is now shaping itself, in comparison with its conditions and methods twenty or thirty years ago. The railroads have always existed by virtue of charters which gave them a quasi-public character, and have always been theoretically subject to certain old principles of English common law under which the public or common carrier, like the innkeeper, performs a function not wholly private in its nature. Nevertheless, in its earlier stages the railroad system of this country was in large part constructed and operated by its projectors with no sense whatever of responsibility ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... carry up its accusations against any chief of the executive department whom it may believe to be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Before that tribunal the accused is confronted with his accusers, and may demand the privilege, which the justice of the common law secures to the humblest citizen, of a full, patient, and impartial inquiry into the facts, upon the testimony of witnesses rigidly cross-examined and deposing in the face of day. If such a proceeding had been adopted toward me, unjust as I should certainly have regarded it, I should, I trust, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... in Chancery against him, and force him upon oath to give an account. He has not, however, given them light enough or afforded them sufficient ground for a fishing bill in Chancery. Yet he says, "If you call upon me in a Chancery way, or by Common Law, I really will abdicate all forms, and give you some account." In consequence of this the Company did demand from him an account, regularly, and as fully and formally as if they had demanded it in a court of justice. He positively ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... should be a warning. She was resentful because George Grey had put her in a position where she had been embarrassed by intense sectional sense of duty and by kindly personal regard for a man who not being criminal was to be deprived of all the safeguards against injustice provided by the common law. There were other and minor causes which helped to content her with what she well knew she had done to disappoint Mr. Woodburn of his prey. George Grey was really a bore of capacity to wreck the social patience of the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... oppress'd, They durst not rail, perhaps; they lash'd, at least, And turn'd them out of office with a jest. No fool could peep abroad, but ready stand The drolls to clap a bauble in his hand. Wise legislators never yet could draw A fop within the reach of common law; For posture, dress, grimace, and affectation, 10 Though foes to sense, are harmless to the nation. Our last redress is dint of verse to try, And Satire is our Court of Chancery. This way took Horace to reform an age, Not bad enough to need an author's ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and secured against molestation by the governmental interests; more particularly and scrupulously among those peoples that have taken the lead in working out that system of free or popular institutions that marks the modern civilised nations. So it has come to be embodied in the common law of the modern world as an inviolable natural right. It has all the prescriptive force of legally ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... said that this court decision follows the English Common law; and now being settled by a decision, it is not open for further consideration. In this progressive age nothing is settled until it is settled right. Judge Taney once judicially settled the status of the African ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... United States of Europe have to keep as their ideal the affirmation of this public right, and to enforce it by a common will. That creation of a common will is at once the most difficult and the most imperative thing of all. Every one must be aware how difficult it is. We know, for instance, how the common law is enforced in any specified state, because it has a "sanction," or, in other words, because those who break it can be punished. But the weakness for a long time past of international law, from the time ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... of things at the present time. The principle of compulsory military service, obligatory upon every able-bodied male between the ages of sixteen and sixty, is still the fundamental principle of English Law, both Common Law and Statute Law. It has been obscured by the pernicious voluntary principle, which, in the much-abused name of Liberty, has shifted a universal national duty upon the shoulders of the patriotic few. But it has ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profess the common law, he, took ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... I think, I understand better. Their code of common law is built upon ours; and the difference between us is this, in England the laws are acted upon, in America ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... good their censorship of acts of Congress with the approval of even the Jeffersonian opposition. Instead, they enforced the Sedition Act, often with gratuitous rigor, while some of them even entertained prosecutions under a supposed Common Law of the United States. The immediate sequel to their action was the claim put forth in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that the final authority in interpreting the National Constitution lay with the local legislatures. Before the principle of judicial ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... concerning the same. And no further appeals to be had or made from the said commissioners for the same.' These commissioners are appointed judges only for that turn; and they are commonly of the spiritualty, or bishops; of the common law, as judges of Westminster Hall; as well as those of the civil law. And these are mixed one with another, according to the nature ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... time no action at common law was maintainable against a person who by his wrongful act, neglect or default caused the immediate death of another person, and an Act (known as Lord Campbell's Act), "for compensating the Families of Persons Killed ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... Common Law comes from England, and originated there in custom. It is often called the unwritten law, because unwritten in origin, though there are now many books describing it. Its principles originated as habits of the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... contrasted with American or British, origin. This can readily be understood when it is remembered that the governments of Continental Europe are theoretically on a different basis and of different origin from those of the United States and Great Britain or of those countries where the English Common Law prevails. ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... with that cynical frankness which seems often to follow upon a few years devoted to practice at the Common Law Bar, where men in truth spend their days in dissecting the mental diseases of their fellow creatures, and learn to conclude that a pure and healthy mind is possessed by none. He moved slightly in his chair, and seemed to indicate that he had made ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... nature of the service which they render and the privileges they enjoy. This principle was overlaid in many cases by the human desire to punish the railroads as the cause of economic distress, but it was visible in all the laws. It is an old rule of the common law that the ferryman, the baker, and the innkeeper are subject to public control, and railways were now classified with these. In Wisconsin, the "Potter" Law established a schedule with classified rates, superseding all ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... true; but just bear with me a moment. It cannot, at any rate, be thought that a clergyman should come out of prison and go to his living without any notice from his bishop, simply because he has already been punished under the common law. If this were so, a clergyman might be fined ten days running for being drunk in the street,—five shillings each time,—and at the end of that time might set his bishop at defiance. When a clergyman has shown himself to be utterly unfit for clerical duties, he must not be held to be protected ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... common law, and in particular the eighty-seventh section of the constitution, lay down as an invariable rule, that no subject can be compelled to cede his property, unless the general good of the commonwealth requires it, and then only on receiving ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... herein lies the difference between virtue and vice. According to the argument there is one among these cords which every man ought to grasp and never let go, but to pull with it against all the rest; and this is the sacred and golden cord of reason, called by us the common law of the State; there are others which are hard and of iron, but this one is soft because golden; and there are several other kinds. Now we ought always to cooperate with the lead of the best, which is ...
— Laws • Plato
... now useless order was formally abolished by Clement V., the reigning Pontiff. The Temple domain, by grant of the crown, then passed to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who conveyed it to the Earl of Lancaster, a cousin of Edward II. It was then rented to the professors and students of the common law, who had recently become an incorporate body, In 1333 the Temple had apparently reverted to the crown, for we find Edward III. farming out the rents for twenty-five pounds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... as they understood and approved they blended with principles drawn from the revived study of Roman law and with Frankish and Norman customs. The legal rules thus elaborated by the king's court were applied by the justices in eyre where-ever their circuits took them, and became in time the common law of England, common because it admitted no local bars and no provincial prejudices. One great stride had been taken in the making of the English nation, when the king's court, trespassing upon local popular and feudal jurisdiction, dumped upon the Anglo-Saxon market the following among other ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... peep into the workings of the system of which the London bobby is a spoke when I went to what is the very hub of the wheel of the common law—a police court. I understood then what gave the policeman in the street his authority and his dignity—and his humility—when I saw how carefully the magistrate on the bench weighed each trifling cause and each petty case; ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... of the "Common Law" can be traced back, through English "dooms" (decisions or laws), to prehistoric times. See E. A. Freeman in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th edition, VIII, 276). The New England "Town Meeting" can be likewise traced ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... at Versailles will try the prisoners exclusively for offences against the common law, and will not consider ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... insisted that it was the common law of the land that the islanders should purchase their corn only of him. They grumbled, but he growled; he swore that it was the constitution of the country; that there was an uninterrupted line of ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... according to Condorcet's calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass for an usurper upon the national property. This is what the serjeants-at-law of the rights of man will say to the puny apprentices of the common law ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had been exercised by his officer in providing Nimbus with the written evidence of his ownership of the mule was by no means needless. According to the common law, the possession of personal property is prima facie evidence of its ownership; but in those early days, before the nation undertook to spread the aegis of equality over him, such was not the rule in the case of the freedman. Those first legislatures, elected only by the high-minded land-owners ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... governed by the laws of Congress, by the common law, and by the laws passed by the territorial legislatures. The governor may pardon offenses against territorial laws, and may grant reprieves for offenses against the laws of Congress, until the cases can be acted ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... question arose, after the passing of the first statute respecting literary property in 1710, whether by certain of its provisions this perpetual copyright at common law was extinguished for the future. The question was solemnly argued before the Court of King's Bench, when Lord Mansfield presided, in 1769. The result was a decision in favour of the common-law right as unaltered by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... English common law derived from the feudal period, that anything through the instrumentality of which death occurred was forfeited to the crown as a deodand; accordingly down to the year 1840 and even later, we find, in all cases where persons were killed, records ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... in Jurisprudence the common law, falls sometimes heavily in individual cases; but for that reason would we do away with it altogether? The law of the indissoluble tie of marriage does, we admit, fall heavily upon some, yea, many lives; should we, therefore, infer God's dictation to be erring, and practice the human law ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Stewarts, established capacity for self-government upon the independence of individual character that knows no superior but the law, and supplied the amazing formative power which has molded, according to the course and practice of the common law, the thought and custom of the hundred millions of men drawn from all lands and all races who inhabit this continent ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... found independently of revelation. From that time it became possible to make politics a matter of principle and of conscience, so that men and nations differing in all other things could live in peace together, under the sanctions of a common law. Grotius himself used his discovery to little purpose, as he deprived it of immediate effect by admitting that the right to reign may be enjoyed as a freehold, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law until his return to Maryland ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... his brain was every rule of equity and common law of the great North country. For his knowledge he went back two hundred years. He knew that a law did not die of age, that it must be legislated to death, and out of the moldering past he had dug up every trick and trap ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... beardless undergraduate, he had the honor of knowing some married ladies, of good family and unblemished repute, who lived with their husbands in the Middle Temple. One of those ladies—the daughter of a country magistrate, the sister of a distinguished classic scholar—was the wife of a common law barrister who now holds a judicial appointment in one of our colonies. The women of her old home circle occasionally called on this young wife: but as they could not reach her quarters in Sycamore Court without attracting much unpleasant observation, their visits were not frequent. Living in a ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Forest. As to that forest there is a good deal of ancient exaggeration and a good deal of modern misconception. The word forest is often misunderstood. In its older meaning, a meaning which it still keeps in some parts, a forest has nothing to do with trees. It is a tract of land put outside the common law and subject to a stricter law of its own, and that commonly, probably always, to secure for the King the freer enjoyment of the pleasure of hunting. Such a forest William made in Hampshire; the impression which it made on men's minds ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... too. "Pleasant dreams to you always. But what I have quoted was the common law, and so remained until altered by the Revised Statutes, with which no doubt ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... a single proposal, which, from a Norwegian point of view, would be acceptable, to make decisions that might in any possible degree remedy the deficiences. On the contrary, Mr HAGERUP mentions that such decisions would be calculated to stamp Norway as a dependency, according to international and common law principles, and declared that from a national point of view, it indicates a very great retrogression on the present arrangement of the Consular Service[34:1]. In this, he forgets that Mr BOSTROeM'S conditions refer to exceptional ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... places they are open in the evening and closed in the morning. The ancient idea was that a wayside public house was a place of sustenance and comfort, a human need that might be wanted any hour. It was in the same class with the life boat or the emergency ambulance. Under the old common law the innkeeper must supply meat and drink at any hour. If he was asleep the traveller might wake him. And in those days meat and drink were regarded in the same light. Note how great the change is. In modern life in England there is nothing that you dare wake up a man for except gasoline. The mere ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... attorney-general of the United States, to my inquiry whether he would give me, offhand, the law on a certain point, to save the time requisite for a formal application and answer in writing. He said if it was a question of statute law he would have to examine the books, but if only a question of common law he could make that as well as anybody. But I had nothing better to do for a time in Florida, and when I got out I did not find my memory half so much overloaded with law as my blood was with malarial poison. Luckily, I got rid of the poison after a while, but held on ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... to Sir E. Grey that the provision conflicts with the principle of the English common law that an enemy subject is not entitled to bring an action in the courts to sustain a contract, commerce ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... The disinclination of Charles to have anything to do with contested litigation became more marked, and I was compelled, long before my admission to the bar, to look after such cases as grew out of his practice. The pleadings then in vogue were the declarations, pleas and replications of the English common law. These I prepared after I had been a student for a year, and, in cases within the jurisdiction of a justice of the peace, I habitually appeared either in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the bill for the act enabling townships, incorporated towns and cities to vote a five per cent. tax in aid of railroad construction. He favored always such legislation as would most encourage the building of railroads, believing that with an increase of competitive lines the common law and competition could be relied upon to correct abuses and solve the rate problem. He has since become convinced of the falsity of this doctrine, and now realizes the truth of Stephenson's saying that where combination ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... those who have been contaminated and injured in this way should easily be able to obtain reparation. Although it is admitted in principle that the communication of syphilis is an offence even under common law he is in agreement with those who would treat it as a special offence, making a new and more practical law.[248] Heavy damages are even at the present time obtained in the French courts from men who have infected young women in sexual intercourse, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Colonies are based on those of England, for these are part of the Englishman's rights. All personal relations are controlled by Statute Law and Common Law. Roman Law is recognized only in Courts of Admiralty. The light of trial by a Jury of twelve men is recognized just as in England. It was one of the grounds of complaint against the Stamp Act, that questions arising under ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall
... the order of the Knights Templar was suppressed in Edward the Second's reign, their London estate on the bank of the Thames was given over to the Knights of St. John; by these it was leased to the students of the Common Law, who, not finding a home at Cambridge or Oxford, were at that time in ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... earth and of the Homeric gods on Olympus.' Perhaps, and indeed probably, this constitution may be that of the primitive tribe which Romans left to go one way, and Greeks to go another, and Teutons to go a third. The tribe took it with them, as the English take the common law with them, because it was the one kind of polity which they could conceive and act upon; or it may be that the emigrants from the primitive Aryan stock only took with them a good aptitude—an excellent political nature, which similar circumstances in distant countries ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... us to go and join another group, consisting of magistrates, who were discussing a point of common law; and, in like manner, called upon his oracle, who, by the sagacity of his reflections, bore away all suffrages, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... staged back along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushed my Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitably slipshod morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute that in reality only sets in writing a presumption of the common law, the ancient presumption of marriage, which is that when a man and woman go to house-keeping for a certain length of time, they shall be deemed legally married. In Arizona this period is set at ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... combined labors of the most enlightened legislatures and jurists, has been equally unsuccessful in delineating the several objects and limits of different codes of laws and different tribunals of justice. The precise extent of the common law, and the statute law, the maritime law, the ecclesiastical law, the law of corporations, and other local laws and customs, remains still to be clearly and finally established in Great Britain, where accuracy in such subjects has been more industriously pursued ...
— The Federalist Papers
... importance than this change, which was in effect but the completion of a process of severance that had long been going on, was the establishment of an equitable jurisdiction side by side with that of the common law. In his reform of 1178 Henry the Second broke up the older King's Court, which had till then served as the final Court of Appeal, by the severance of the purely legal judges who had been gradually added to it from the general body of his councillors. ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... to use in his writings, lest they should remain forever unknown to all but the inhabitants of a relatively unimportant insular kingdom, is now the speech of two continents. The Common Law which Coke jealously upheld in the southern half of a single European island, is now the law of the land throughout the vast regions of Australasia, and of America north of the Rio Grande. The names ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Irish State trials will constitute a conspicuous and mortifying event in the history of the times. A gigantic conspiracy for the dismemberment of the empire was boldly encountered at its highest point of development by the energy of the common law of the land, as administered in the ordinary courts of justice. That law, itself certainly intricate and involved, had to deal with facts of almost unprecedented complication and difficulty; but after a long and desperate struggle, the law triumphed over every obstacle that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... consequences of the French protectorate and renounces the capitulations; the Sherifian Government shall have complete liberty of action in regard to German nationals, and all German protected persons shall be subject to the common law. All movable and immovable German property, including mining rights, may be sold at public auction, the proceeds to be paid to the Sherifian Government and deducted from the reparation account. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... had previously pronounced in his life of Lord Northington, where he praised the House of Lords for "very properly rejecting the bill passed by the Commons declaring general warrants to be illegal, leaving this question to be decided (as it was, satisfactorily) by the Courts of Common Law."] ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... common law, Islamic law, and Napoleonic codes; judicial review by Supreme Court and Council of State (oversees validity of administrative decisions); accepts ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... understand what the Queen's Government really is—how completely it is carried on in the Royal name by Parliamentary Ministers. For them the law is really incarnate in the Sovereign; in yielding obedience to magistrates and policemen, to common law and Parliamentary statutes, in forbearing or resisting riot, they obey or uphold the Royal authority. Were they aware that at each general election they choose their real and effective rulers for an indefinite period, they would be confused, alarmed, and bewildered, to a degree ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... system, and several points are worthy of imitation. Thus a girl quitting the Lyce would have attained, first and foremost, a thorough knowledge of her own language and its literature; she would also possess a fair notion of French common law, of domestic economy, including needlework of the more useful kind, the cutting out and making up of clothes, and the like. Gymnastics are practised daily. In the matter of religion the municipality of Toulouse ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... monuments, and statues, erected in honor of gods, heroes, and conquerors. In the very midst stood the great temple of Jupiter, which contained the colossal gold and ivory statue of the god, the masterpiece of the sculptor Phidias. Hence, by the common law of Greece Elis was deemed a sacred territory, and its cities were unwalled, as they were thought to be sufficiently protected by the sanctity of the country; and it was only when the ancient faith began to give way that the sacred ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the peace I try'd a little, by attending a few courts, and sitting on the bench to hear causes; but finding that more knowledge of the common law than I possess'd was necessary to act in that station with credit, I gradually withdrew from it, excusing myself by my being oblig'd to attend the higher duties of a legislator in the Assembly. My election to this trust was repeated every year for ten years, without my ever asking ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... of Libya, of which district Paraetonium was the capital, and Cleomenes prefect of Arabia at Heroopolis, in guard of that frontier. Orders were given to all these generals that justice was to be administered by the Egyptian nomarchs according to the common law or ancient customs of the land. Petisis, however, either never entered upon his office or soon quitted it, and Doloaspis was left nomarch ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the opprobrious words he muttered to himself as he passed out of earshot. The beneficent common law does not condemn a man merely on his own confession unless circumstances in evidence lend probability to his self-accusation. Before we coincide in Mr. Hunt's opinion of himself, let us ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... suspicion of ill using of them. Which promise is nothing else but the Oath proposed by Hippoc. to Physicians, in the entrance to his Books) then to trust such as want these qualifications; and this seems to be the reason why our Common Law makes it Felony, for any person to have any one dy under his hand, unless he were a lawful Physician. More noble and generous was the opinion of Alexander the Great, concerning his Physician, who ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... of the defendants, that the Sherman law was intended to prohibit only those restraints which are unreasonable at common law, was dismissed on the ground that this question had been passed upon by the lower court ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... quite got rid of the notion that there was something sacred in ancestral custom, and that to alter it by legislation was a sort of impiety. We in England still conceive that there is something in the breast of the judge, and the belief is a lingering shadow of the tribal custom, the source of the common law. Now what conditions would be most favourable to this critical effort, so fraught with momentous consequences to humanity? Apparently a union of elements belonging to different tribes such as would compel them, for the preservation of peace and the regulation of daily ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... earnestly contended that a president of a bank was not an officer within the meaning of the statute; but this contention was overruled by the presiding judge, who was sustained in that view by the Supreme Court on exception. There was, however, no such offence as embezzlement known to the common law. So a person who fraudulently converted to his own use the property of another could only be convicted of larceny; and the offence of larceny could not be committed where the offender had been entrusted with the possession of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... but feel astonished at the strange usage observed in this country, of burying the living with the dead. I have been a great traveller, and seen many countries, but never heard of so cruel a law." "What do you mean, Sinbad?" replied the king: "it is a common law. I shall be interred with the queen, my wife, if she die first." "But, Sir," said I, "may I presume to ask your majesty, if strangers be obliged to observe this law?" "Without doubt," returned the king (smiling at the occasion of my question), ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... with any of the great principles and laws which they derived from their forefathers. They took special care to speak with reverence of, and to preserve Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, and not only all the body of the Common Law of England, but most of the rules of our courts, and all our form of jurisprudence. Indeed it is the greatest glory of England that she has thus supplied with sound principles of freedom those immense regions which will be peopled perhaps ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... the system established by immemorial custom) every boy is alternately tyrant and slave. The power which the elder part of these communities exercises over the younger is exceedingly great; very difficult to be controlled; and accompanied, not unfrequently, with cruelty and caprice. It is the common law of these places, that the younger should be implicitly obedient to the elder boys; and this obedience resembles more the submission of a slave to his master, or of a sailor to his captain, than the common and natural deference which would always ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of serjeant-at-law was to be conferred, for the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with the consent of the other justices, to nominate for the purpose seven or eight of the most experienced professors of the common law. Thereupon the Lord Chancellor issued a writ to each of them, summoning them to appear under a heavy penalty, and take upon themselves the state and degree of serjeant-at-law. On duly presenting themselves they affirmed on oath that they would be ready on a day and at a place, which ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... on English common law, except in Quebec, where civil law system based on French law prevails; accepts compulsory ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... treason. But on reflection perhaps it may appear not altogether alien to the subject. This crime is ordinarily considered by our lawyers as limited and defined by the statute of 25 Edward III. As Blackstone has observed, "By the ancient common law there was a great latitude left in the breast of the judges, to determine what was treason, or not so: whereby the creatures of tyrannical power had opportunity to create abundance of constructive treasons; that is, to raise, by forced and arbitrary constructions, offences into the crime ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... in English law to signify the immediate transfer of the sovereignty, with all its attributes and prerogatives, to the successor without any interregnum in accordance with the maxim "the king never dies." At common law the death of the sovereign eo facto dissolved parliament, but this was abolished by the Representation of the People Act 1867, 51. Similarly the common law doctrine that all offices held under the crown determined at its demise has been negatived by the Demise of the Crown Act 1901. "Demise" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... therefore military law prevails, and not the code of Justinian. It is my duty to protect your treasure and my own, and ensure that each man shall receive his share. After the division you may do what you please with the money, for you will then be under the common law, and I should not presume even to advise concerning ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... ideal they saw, yet they gave the pattern of all that is most enduring in our country to-day. They brought to the wilderness the thinking mind, the printed book, the deep-rooted desire for self-government and the English common law that judges alike the king and the subject, the law on which rests the whole structure of ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... being concerned with the Marquis of Hamilton in a design upon the crown of Scotland, he was challenged by the latter to make good his assertion by single combat.[65] It had been at first the intention of the government to try the case by the common law, but Ramsay thought he would stand a better chance of escape by recurring to the old and almost exploded custom, but which was still the right of every man in appeals of treason. Lord Reay readily accepted the challenge, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... remembered, brother, that the barony of Tillietudlem has the baronial privilege of pit and gallows; and therefore, if the lad was to be executed on my estate, (which I consider as an unhandsome thing, seeing it is in the possession of females, to whom such tragedies cannot be acceptable,) he ought, at common law, to have been delivered up to my bailie, and justified ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... them into the beautiful forms that so much gratify our eyes in passing through the Crystal Palace. For this service you are to be paid; but to enable you to receive payment you need the aid of the legislator, as the common law grants no more copyright for the form in which ideas are expressed than for the ideas themselves. In granting this aid he is required to see that, while he secures that you have justice, he does no injustice to the men who produce the raw material of your books, nor to the community ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... no legislative body, since the laws of Moses were not only a constitution but also a code. No doubt a common law grew up under the decisions of the local courts and courts of appeal. But provision was made by Moses for any necessary amendment of his laws by the reference which he made to any prophet like himself who might afterward arise, whom the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... people and states of the territory, to be forever unalterable, save by the consent of both parties. The first guaranteed complete freedom of worship and religious belief to all peaceable and orderly persons. The second provided for trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, the privileges of the common law, and the right of proportional legislative representation. The third enjoined that faith should be kept with the Indians, and provided that "schools and the means of education" should forever be encouraged, inasmuch as "religion, morality, and knowledge" were necessary ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... One of these sections declares that the laws of Maryland, as they existed at the time of the cession, should be in force in that part of the District ceded by that State, and by this provision the common law in civil and criminal cases, as it prevailed in Maryland in 1801, was established in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... payment of his debts, may conceal his property or his money; but this court may compel him to disclose and give up the same to satisfy an execution; and it may prevent persons indebted to him from making payment to him. A person refusing to fulfill a contract may, in courts of common law, only be sued for damage; but this court may in certain cases compel him to fulfill the contract itself. It may also restrain individuals and corporations from committing fraudulent acts, and prevent persons from committing wastes on land and ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... widow would under American common law receive a life interest in one-third of his real property, called a dower right, which would revert to his children if she died ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... religion was Protestant and English; our literature took root in English forms of thought; our free institutions were the outcome of principles which had been, and now are, influential in English politics; our common law was English, our traditions of liberty were English, and that union of liberty and law which makes us strong, we inherited from our English fathers. So that in 1820, two hundred years after the arrival of the Mayflower, we were essentially an English ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... need hardly be pointed out. He was the son of nobody, filius nullius, without name or kin so far as kinship meant rights of inheritance or of succession. In reality this child of nobody did in a way belong to his mother as the legitimate child never did in common law, for, while the right of the unmarried mother to the custody of the child of her shame was not so noble and dignified a thing as the right of the father to the legitimate child, she had in fact a claim, at least so long as the child was of tender years, not so different ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... things, he must have forgotten that, by the fundamental laws of the realm, a political assembly is the supreme court of appeal, the court which finally confirms or annuls the judgments of the courts, both of common law and of equity, at Westminster, of the courts of Scotland, of the courts of Ireland, of this very Master of the Rolls about whom we are debating. Surely, if the noble lord's principle be a sound one, it is not with the Master of the Rolls but with the House of Peers ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sometimes allowed, and a unanimous vote by a jury was not always required. Growing wealth and the consequent multiplication of litigants necessitated an increase in the number of judges in most courts. Efforts were made, with some success, by combining common law with equity procedure, and in other ways, to render lawsuits more simple, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... posy of his grandfather, Just and True. Sir Ed. Cook [said] whoever shall go about to overthrow Common Law, the Common Law will overthrow him. His motion, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Radstock, was obliged to stand still once every ten minutes to snore and snort." "Some were like Evan's mill, which was a gentlemanly mill; it would go when it had nothing to do, but it refused to work." The legal proceedings, both in equity and at common law, which now became necessary, were numerous. One bill of costs, from 1796 to 1800, amounted to between L5,000 and L6,000; and the mental and bodily labor, the anxiety and vexation, which were superadded, involved a fearful tax on the province of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... eyes, wrung from him as much by a sense of his offended moral superiority as by the gratuitous insult and betrayal that he had suffered. We gave the accusers a glance of stern reproach: had they not delivered us over to the common enemy? If the common law of school entitled them to thrash us, did it not require them to keep silence ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... made, acquired legitimate power by them to govern the people, or occupy the lands from sea to sea, did not enter the mind of any man. They were well understood to convey the title which, according to the common law of European sovereigns respecting America, they might rightfully convey, and no more. This was the exclusive right of purchasing such lands as the natives were willing to sell. The crown could not be understood to grant what the crown did not affect to claim, nor was ...
— Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, at January Term, 1832, Delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in the Case of Samuel A. Worcester, Plaintiff in Error, versus the State of Georgia • John Marshall |
