An account of the books included in the dedicatory exhibit at the Joseph and Edythe Jackier Rare Book Room, April 14 1996

Simpson, A. W. Brian

English

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The Joseph and Edythe Jackier Rare Book Room: The Invention of Printing and the Common Law Tradition

University of Michigan School of Law

University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository Law Library Publications Law School History and Publications 1996 The Joseph and Edythe Jackier Rare Book Room: The Invention of Printing and the Common Law Tradition A. W. Brian Simpson University of Michigan Law School Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/law_library/7 Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/law_library  Part of the Legal History Commons Citation Simpson, A. W. Brian, "The Joseph and Edythe Jackier Rare Book Room: The Invention of Printing and the Common Law Tradition" (1996). Law Library Publications. 7. https://repository.law.umich.edu/law_library/7 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School History and Publications at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Law Library Publications by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact mlaw.repository@umich.edu. The Joseph and Edythe Jaclrier Rare Book Room makes possible, for the first time, exhibits of the Law Librruy's ver:y large number of old law books. . The Collection includes no less than sixty titles published before 1500 - called incunabula since they come from the infancy of printing. In this· exhibition we can only show a small selection, chosen to illustrate the· early history of the printed law book and the rise of certain important types of legal literature. The invention of printing with moveable type had as dramatic an effect on Western European culture as the invention of the. computer in our · own · �e .. InEngland printing began in 14 77, when William Caxton published his The Dictes or Sayeng� of the Philosophres. . . .. -, Caxton however printed only one law book in 1490; this was a collection of Acts of Parliament. Before the advent of printing lawyers, like everyone else, had to rely on . handwritten manuscripts; indeed long after . printed law books became commonplace lawyers continued to make extensive use of handwritten texts. · But the printed book progressively supplanted the handwritten legal text. The world before printing is illustrated by. a manuscript Register of Writs (Item 1). This·would have been a· very expensive book. It is written on vellum, probably by a professional scribe, and was produced for 1 The Joseph and Edythe Jaclrier Rare Book Room makes possible, for the first time, exhibits of the Law Librruy's ver:y large number of old law books. . The Collection includes no less than sixty titles published before 1500 - called incunabula since they come from the infancy of printing. In this· exhibition we can only show a small selection, chosen to illustrate the· early history of the printed law book and the rise of certain important types of legal literature. The invention of printing with moveable type had as dramatic an effect on Western European culture as the invention of the. computer in our · own · �e .. InEngland printing began in 14 77, when William Caxton published his The Dictes or Sayeng� of the Philosophres. . . .. -, Caxton however printed only one law book in 1490; this was a collection of Acts of Parliament. Before the advent of printing lawyers, like everyone else, had to rely on . handwritten manuscripts; indeed long after . printed law books became commonplace lawyers continued to make extensive use of handwritten texts. · But the printed book progressively supplanted the handwritten legal text. The world before printing is illustrated by. a manuscript Register of Writs (Item 1). This·would have been a· very expensive book. It is written on vellum, probably by a professional scribe, and was produced for 1 Chancery, which was, in the fifteenth century, thought of as a Court of Conscience. Confessor's manuals are, I am told, still in use in the Catholic Church, but lay persons now rely on Catechisms instead. The common law system was based in part on authoritative texts -Acts of Parliament- and "in part on a oral tradition of court practice, for which law reports served as aids to memoiy. Statutes were ·amongst, the earliest legal texts published; the libraiy does not possess any very early examples. Item 4 is a collection of Statutes of Heniy VIII (1509 - 1547), with legislation from the 25th to the 41st years, printed by T}J.oinas Berthelet in 1551. The volume_ is open at a point showing an Act for the protection of ducks, and for the attainder for treason of Elizabeth Barton (the deranged mystic "Nun of Kent"). She was executed in 1534 for prophesying against Anhe Boleyn and condemning the King's divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon, and his remarriage to Anne. - Item 5 is a collection of Heniy VIII's statutesprinted by Thomas Powell in 1563. It is open at "An Act Against Poysoning". This,· the most bizarre · English statute,_ provided for the boiling alive of Richard Roose, the Bishop of Rochester's cook, who was thought to have poisoned a poor widow, and for the boiling of future cooks who poisoned food and thus committed an 5 unnatural crime. Richard was indeed boiled, as were a number of other cooks. On the same page is some racialist legislation against "Egyptians", that is Gypsies, who were to be expelled from the country and their property confiscated. The treatment of this minority in some parts of Europe remains a human rights problem today. Law reports were and are the typical texts of the common law. Item 6 is a law report, a printed Yearbook, containing case reports from 1466, the sixth year of Edward N. The language is Norman French, then still used for legal argument in the Royal Courts, and the typeface used is called "black letter". Hence "black letter lawyer" - a lawyer steeped in the learning of the old books. This volume is open at "The Case of the Thorns" (Hull v. Ozynge), which contains a discussion of the principles of liability in tort law - should a defendant be liable without fault if loss was caused? This case, almost incredibly, is still used five centuries later in teaching tort law by the case system in modern America. Professor Richard Epstein, having studied it in his Oxford law course, included it in his Casebook Cases and Materials on Torts (1995). Many editions of yearbooks were published between about 1482 and 1679; originally just one year's cases would form an edition, but before long collections 6 branch of the law. It was where the money was. Originally written in Norman French, but from the 1530s also published in English, it became the most successful book on English law ever written. Over ninety editions are known, ar.id the text itself came to be treated as authoritative. The reader is addressed as "my son", and this has led to the idea that it was written for Littleton's own son, but this was a way of addressing pupils, and the book probably originated as a set of elementary lectures on the law. Later Lord Chief Justice Coke claimed it to be "the most perfect and absolute work that ever was written in any human science". Littleton was the first common law treatise ever . published, the first printing probably being in 1481. The English edition exhibited here was printed by Totten in 1556. It is open at the first section, which provides a definition of th� largest property interest recognized, the "estate in fee simple". It remains correct for the present day. In the Roman Law based systems of continental Europe the printing of law books was conducted on a very considerable scale, and the Law. Library owns a number of such books, some dating from the fifteenth century, as well as a larger number of early books of the Canon Law, the law of the Western Church (see Item 3 above). Item 11 is an example of Roman Law text. It is 10 an edition of the Institutes of Justinian, a comprehensive and readable statement of the whole of private Roman Law, issued in Constantinople in 533 A.D. to provide the first year course in the law schools ofpresent day Istanbul and Beirut. This edition wasprinted in Nuremberg in 1486, and its first owner wasJohn Compotus, who bought it at Easter, 1488. Itembodies a commentary or gloss by Accursius (c.1182c. 1260); it is open at the first page where the Institutesclaims that imperial majesty must be adorned by lawsas well as by arms, referring thereby to the two principalfunctions of government making war andadministering law. The form of the book is transitionalbetween· manuscript production and printing. Theinfluence of Roman Law on the common law iscontroversial, but the structure of Justinian's Institutes,derived from· an earlier work by, Oaiu$, written about150 A.D., though somewhat modified, underlies the firstsuccessful similar work in the common law tradition,Blackstone's Commentaries (Items 18 and 19 below).The form of this edition of the Institutes, a basic text with an elaborate gloss, was used by Sir Edw�d Coke (1552 - 1634) in the first part of his Institutes of the Laws of England (Item 12). His wife remarked, on hearing of his death, 'We shall never see his like again,_ thanks be to God!". The book provides an elaborate 11 branch of the law. It was where the money was. Originally written in Norman French, but from the 1530s also published in English, it became the most successful book on English law ever written. Over ninety editions are known, ar.id the text itself came to be treated as authoritative. The reader is addressed as "my son", and this has led to the idea that it was written for Littleton's own son, but this was a way of addressing pupils, and the book probably originated as a set of elementary lectures on the law. Later Lord Chief Justice Coke claimed it to be "the most perfect and absolute work that ever was written in any human science". Littleton was the first common law treatise ever . published, the first printing probably being in 1481. The English edition exhibited here was printed by Totten in 1556. It is open at the first section, which provides a definition of th� largest property interest recognized, the "estate in fee simple". It remains correct for the present day. In the Roman Law based systems of continental Europe the printing of law books was conducted on a very considerable scale, and the Law. Library owns a number of such books, some dating from the fifteenth century, as well as a larger number of early books of the Canon Law, the law of the Western Church (see Item 3 above). Item 11 is an example of Roman Law text. It is 10 an edition of the Institutes of Justinian, a comprehensive and readable statement of the whole of private Roman Law, issued in Constantinople in 533 A.D. to provide the first year course in the law schools ofpresent day Istanbul and Beirut. This edition wasprinted in Nuremberg in 1486, and its first owner wasJohn Compotus, who bought it at Easter, 1488. Itembodies a commentary or gloss by Accursius (c.1182c. 1260); it is open at the first page where the Institutesclaims that imperial majesty must be adorned by lawsas well as by arms, referring thereby to the two principalfunctions of government making war andadministering law. The form of the book is transitionalbetween· manuscript production and printing. Theinfluence of Roman Law on the common law iscontroversial, but the structure of Justinian's Institutes,derived from· an earlier work by, Oaiu$, written about150 A.D., though somewhat modified, underlies the firstsuccessful similar work in the common law tradition,Blackstone's Commentaries (Items 18 and 19 below).The form of this edition of the Institutes, a basic text with an elaborate gloss, was used by Sir Edw�d Coke (1552 - 1634) in the first part of his Institutes of the Laws of England (Item 12). His wife remarked, on hearing of his death, 'We shall never see his like again,_ thanks be to God!". The book provides an elaborate 11 E. Thorne of the Hruvard Law School. This edition wasprinted by Totten in 1569. "Bracton" tried to state thewhole of the common law, using categories and conceptsderived from Roman law - rather as do thoseanthropologists who describe the practices of theirsubjects in the conceptions of the anthropologist's ownculture. Had it been more influential it might haveRomanised the common law, but this never happened.The common law developed its own distinct culture andeducational system, and. "Bra.cton" came to be anirrelevance; by the fifteenth century it was even thoughtby common lawyers to be a Roman Law book. Why itwas published in 1569 is something of a puzzle. Sixhundred years .after "Bracton" a more successful attempt·was made to write a comprehensive account of thecommon law - see Items 18 and 19 below. This copy of"Bracton" was· presented to the law school by the Classof 1868.In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries law printing· was fairly tightly controlled, but matters loosened up in the seventeenth century, with various . new ventures in legal writing. Item 15 illustrates this; it is an anonymous work by "I.L.", edited by one " T.E."; · entitled The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights; or the Laws Provision for Woemen and was printed by the assigns of John More in 1632. This is the first book ever 14 

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The Joseph and Edythe Jackier Rare Book Room: The Invention of Printing and the Common Law Tradition

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