Henry James Sumner Maine Quotes

• When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code, there is an end to what may be called its spontaneous development.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any set of human institutions.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The Roman Code was merely an enunciation in words of the existing customs of the Roman people.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The most superficial student of Roman history must be struck by the extraordinary degree in which the fortunes of the republic were affected by the presence of foreigners, under different names, on her soil.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The epoch of Customary Law, and of its custody by a privileged order, is a very remarkable one.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• Law is stable; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge; and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

• In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

Henry James Sumner Maine (14)

Birth:	15th August, 1822
Death:	3rd February, 1888
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Historian, Jurist, Professor

About

Sir Henry James Sumner Maine was born in Kelso, Scotland, UK. He was a British comparative jurist and historian. He is famous for the thesis outlined in his book Ancient Law that law and society developed "from status to contract." He was educated at Christ's Hospital. At Cambridge, he was noted as a classical scholar and also won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for poetry in 1842. He won a Craven scholarship and graduated as senior classic in 1844, being also senior chancellor's medallist in classics. In 1847, he was appointed regius professor of civil law. In 1869, he was appointed to the chair of historical and comparative jurisprudence newly founded in the University of Oxford by Corpus Christi College. He wrote several books include: Ancient Law, Village-communities in the East and West, The Early History of the Property of Married Women, Lectures on the Early History of Institutions, Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, Popular Government, International Law, and Plato: A Poem.

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