Roman Law and Common Law was first published in 1936. The second edition, entirely reset, revised throughout and supplemented by Professor F. H. Lawson, Fellow of Brasenose College and Professor of Comparative Law in the University of Oxford, appeared in 1952. This was done at the suggestion of Lord McNair, who read the revised copy. Professor Lawson's work of revision was extensive and touches every part of the book. In 1965 many small corrections were made. The book remains in this edition a 'comparison in outline'. It does not set out to be a comprehensive statement of Roman Law and Common Law comparatively treated, or a comparative study of legal methods. It is concerned rather with the fundamental rules and institutions of the two systems, and examines the independent approaches of the two peoples and their lawyers to the same facts of human life.
This is a book of unusual merit and interest. The author, Dr. Radzinowicz, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, is the Assistant Director of Research in Criminal Science in the Cambridge Faculty of Law. It is the first of a series of volumes in which he proposes to set forth the history of our criminal law and its administration from 1750 onwards, and an examination of his sources and his methods indicates that he has set himself a task whose magnitude and complexity would daunt most scholars. As Lord Macmillan, in the Foreword which he contributes as Chairman of the Pilgrim Trust, points out, the author's conception of what is meant by raw materials is staggering. The examination of decided cases and textbooks alone would be formidable, but Dr. Radzinowicz has already had to consult some 1,250 reports of Commissions and Committees of Inquiry, 800 annual reports and 1,100 volumes of Parliamentary Debates.
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