London HENRY FROWDE & STEVENS AND SONS, LIMITED DGMMINAL NVSTIO New York MACMILLAN & CO 112 FOURTH AVENUE JAMES CRAWFORD LEDLIE, B.C.L., M.A. OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW AND OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, oxford WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY ERWIN GRUEBER, DR. JUR., M.A. OF BALLIOL COLLEGE READER IN ROMAN LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS LONDON: HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AMEN CORNER AND STEVENS & SONS, LIMITED 119 & 120 CHANCERY LANE M DCCC XCII вс TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE IN translating Professor Sohm's Treatise on Roman Law I have been obliged to follow an arrangement, and to avail myself of expressions, to which, in some instances, English readers, not familiar with the terminology and methods of exposition in use among German jurists, will perhaps be inclined to take exception. Such a phrase as 'obligatory right,' or 'petitory action,' or 'heir by necessity,' will strike them as no less strange than the arrangement which treats of the law of procedure under the heading of the law of property. But where the object is to produce a close and faithful translation, the order of the original must, I conceive, be strictly adhered to; and where phrases such as 'Forderungsrecht,' 'petitorische Klage,' 'Noterbe,' occur, for which we have no equivalent at all, or, at any rate, no recognised rendering, translations must be found which, if they are to be accurate, must of necessity be more or less unfamiliar. And this unfamiliarity will not be without its advantages if it saves the student from erroneously importing into a German treatise the ideas associated with some of the commoner terms of English jurisprudence. I have to express my thanks to Sir William Markby and Mr. E. A. Whittuck for many useful suggestions made during the progress of the translation. J. C. L. |