Footnote on the common law (Re: Aesthetics and Ethics),

[Justin Schwartz]

Pound's Cantos are fairly easy reading if one just relaxes and
>browses in them for a few years. You don't need a pickaxe, as Adams in
>the lines just preceding the above says he needed in order to read law:
>
>						Bracton,
>	Britten, Fleta on Glanville, must dig with my fingers
>	as nobody will lend me or seell me a pick axe.

Well, that stuff is REALLY hard. I may well be the only person on this list 
who has ever actually wrestled with the early common law, and )alas) I lack 
Latin enoughto read it, or any law French. But I haveread it in Selden. You 
have to deal not only with the inherent knottiness of the language, which is 
written without any attempt at beauty, but with a totally different set of 
problems and a set of legal rules that are both arcane and fairly alien, 
dealing mainly wuth real estate problem sin medeival England. Modern law is 
not nearly so hard, though for someone without legal training, no doubt 
pretty opaque. Adams at least (quoted or alluded to here) could ask lawyers 
like Holmes and historians like Maitland what was what.

jks

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