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Item Condition: Used; Very Good 1951 1st editionÂ
No Dust Cover. INTRODUCTION
BRITISH justice has not always warranted the pride that we feel
Today in our system of law and order. For centuries our concep-
tion ofjustice was primitive to the point of barbarism, while our laws
were administered with savage ferocity by judges who, in some
instances, were monsters of inhumanity.
But that is all over now, and today our law is humane and just.
No country has made so greata contribution to the body of law
eisting in the world today as England. Her law is not only the
law of this country, but it is the basis of the law in all the great arcas
of our Commonwealth and in the United States. It is not the law of
Scotland, although a great deal of modern statutory law is common
to both countries. The basis of Scots law is largely native in character,
although it bears traces of Roman law.
Interest in our courts of law abounds in the heart and mind of
almost everybody. It is to tell people something of the origin and
development of those courts that I have written this book.
In it I propose to tell in simple language the history of our courts
of law throughout the ages right up to the present day. I shall show
the part they have played in the cavalcade of justice from the earliest
times, and point out how they came into being as necessity demanded,
through the growing structure of society. I shall illustrate my story
by relating some of the human and historice dramas which have been
played out within their walls-when they had walls, for our
courts, as you will sce, were held in the openÂ