# Sheldon Amos

Sheldon Amos (1 June 1835 – 3 January 1886) was an English jurist. He wrote articles for The Westminster Review and the Dictionary of National Biography, as well as several books.

## Quotes

* It is well known that up to the time of Bentham the law of England, and more especially the most antiquated portions of it, or the "Common Law," was obsequiously venerated on all side, by judges, practising lawyers, legislators, and the general public, as the "perfection of human reason." If such a view seemed to shock common sense, when brought into glaring contrast with the actual anomalies, contradictions, barbarities, and irrational formalities which characterized every portion of the English Common Law, the difficulty was got over by ascribing all that was reasonable and precise to the Law, and all that was necessarily repugnant even to the acclimatized temperament of legal practitioners, to false interpretations of it.
** The Science of Law. Volume 10 of International scientific series (7th ed.). D. Appleton & Company. 1885. pp. 6–7. (1st edition 1874)
* ... in Justinian's time, the Roman language of law, though debased—as is clearly shown by comparing the terms of any passage of Gaius' Institutes with the terms of the amending passage in Justinian's Institutes—was still equal to its purpose, and was intelligible throughout the bulk of the populations affected by the law. The intensely centralized administration and the current system of judicial procedure and appeals tended to keep the Latin tongue, if not everywhere a vulgar dialect, at all events a necessary accomplishment for all aspirants to office. At the same time the Greek language, which, in Constantinople and all the chief ports of Asia Minor, in Greece itself, in Syria, and in Alexandria, was the language of the market-place, the exchange, and, as it would seem, the polite coterie, afforded a secondary vehicle for the diffusion of Justinian's laws.
** The History and Principles of the Civil Law of Rome. Kegan Paul, Trench & Company. 1883. pp. 2–3.
* One fallacy is that International Law has no existence whatever, and is a mere fiction of the political imagination. This assertion is usually made by those who, either for some particular argumentative purpose wish to prove it a fiction, or, by their own criminal acts, have already done that was in their power to render it such. It is no doubt perfectly true that the body of International Law is at present very imperfectly developed. Many of the rules which compose it are uncertain, ambiguous, or habitually interpreted in the most opposite senses. There are many doctrines which have the feeblest possible hold even upon the States which formally recognise them. There are other doctrines of the highest importance which, though very widely received and conformed to, are still frequently set at nought with utter impunity. But all this vacillation and uncertainty, taken by itself, gives the most incorrect picture of the practical cogency of the great mass of the Rules which compose the International Law of Europe.
** Lectures on International Law: Delivered in the Middle Temple Hall to the Students of the Inns of Court. London: Stevens and Sons. 1874. p. 2.

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Sheldon Amos on Wikipedia
* "Obituary. Professor Sheldon Amos". Journal of the Society of the Arts XXXVI (1729): 141.