num_pages: 469
description: Volume II - Classical and MedievalBook Three, The Structure, examines Greece and Rome. Hailed as the birthplace of democracy, the Athenian system was unstable, inefficient, and short-lived. Nevertheless, Plato laid a philosophical basis for natural law, and Aristotle provided a foundation for justice. Rome had a genius for law and organization, but the constitutional constraints of the Republic gradually gave way to the Empire. But the followers of Christ, once a persecuted minority, came to rule the Empire and put a Christian stamp on Roman law. Book Four, The Centerpiece, begins with the Dark Ages — the darkness of the womb, out of which was born the Common Law. From the Celtic mists, with the Druids and their brehon lawyers, St. Patrick and the Senchus Mor, the Anglo-Saxons in the forests of Germany with their witans and juries which they brought to Britain, Alfred the Great who began his Book of Dooms with the Ten Commandments, to the Norman Conquest and the warfare between the centralizing Norman kings and their opponents, the precepts and institutions of the Common Law took form.
title: Historical and Theological Foundations of Law: Classical and Medieval
publisher: American Vision Press/Tolle Lege Press