“The phrase ‘Roman–Dutch Law’ was invented by Simon van Leeuwen, who employed it as the sub-title of his work entitled Paratitla Juris Novissimi, published at Leyden in 1652. Subsequently his larger and better known treatise on the ‘Roman–Dutch Law’ was issued under that name in the year 1664.
“The system of law thus described is that which obtained in the province of Holland from the middle of the fifteenth to the early years of the nineteenth century. Its main principles were carried by the Dutch into their settlements in the East and West Indies; and when some of these, namely, the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and part of Guiana, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, passed under the dominion of the Crown of Great Britain, the old law was retained as the common law of the territories which now became British colonies. With the expansion of the British Empire in South Africa, the sphere of the Roman–Dutch Law has extended its boundaries, until the whole of the area comprised within the Union of South Africa … has adopted this system as its common law. This is the more remarkable since in Holland itself and in the Dutch colonies of the present day the old law has been replaced by codes ….” R.W. Lee, An Introduction to Roman–Dutch Law 2 (4th ed. 1946).
