Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Legislation
2. Jurists
3. Judges
4. Custom
5. Legislation and Jurists: French Delit
6. Jurists, Judges, Custom, Legislation: Water Rights
7. Legal Transplants I: The Cause of the Reception of Roman Law
8. Legal Transplants 2: Other Reception of Roman Law
9. The Case of English Common law
10. Humanism, The Law of Reason, Codification
11. Conclusions
Notes
Glossary
Index

About the Author

Alan Watson is the Ernest P. Rogers Professor and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia Law School. He is the author of Failures of the Legal Imagination, Slave Law in the Americas, International Law in Archaic Rome, and Roman Slave Law, the last two available from Johns Hopkins.

Reviews

The Evolution of Western Private Law is an innovative look at the development of the Western legal tradition. It makes an important contribution to the literature on legal history, and Watson has carefully examined the sources and the relevant legal documents. Although highly detailed and somewhat technical, Watson writes with great clarity. -- Gerald J. Russello Bryn Mawr Classical Review