19. THE FIVE AGES OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 1 j By John Maxcy Zane* / / IT is a singular fact that but two races in the history of the world have shown what may be called a genius for law. The systems of jurisprudence, which owe their develop- ment to those two races, the Roman and the Norman, now occupy the whole of the civilized world. Our common law is peculiarly the work of the Norman element of the English people. There is no English law, nor English lawyer, be- fore t]ie Norman Conquest. Just as the Saxons with their crude weapons and bull-hide shields broke before the Norman knights at Senlac, so their barbarous system of wer, wite, and bot, their ridiculous ordeals in the criminal law, their haphazard judicial tribunals, and their methods of proof, which had no connection with any rational theory of evi- dence, were certain to yield to the Norman organization, its love of order and of records, its royal inquisition for es- tablishing facts, its King's Court to give uniformity to the law. The Norman Conquest was more than a change of dynasty. It produced a revolution in jurisprudence. The history of our legal development furnishes ample
- Hitherto unpublished, except that the first part appeared in the
Illinois Law Review, volume II, p. 1, June, 1907. All five parts were publicly read as lectures, in February and March, 1906, in the Law School of Northwestern University. 'Lecturer on Legal History and Biography in Northwestern Uni- versity, 1905-1906. A. B. Michigan University, 1884; admitted to the bar in Salt Lake City, Utah, 1888; Reporter of the Supreme Court of Utah, 1889-1894; Member of the Chicago Bar since 1899; Lecturer on Mining Law in the University of Chicago, since 1902. Other Publications: Law of Banks and Banking, 1900; Determi- nable Fees, and other articles in the Harvard Law Review; A Mediaeval Cause C^l^bre, Illinois Law Review, 1907. 625 '
