“The Roman law is the body of rules that governed the social relations of many peoples in Europe, Asia, and Africa for some period between the earliest prehistoric times and 1453 A.D. This date should perhaps be extended to 1900 A.D., or even to the present time, and we might include America in the territory concerned…. Yet the essential fact is that no present-day community … consciously applies as binding upon its citizens the rules of Roman law in their unmodified form. That law is an historical fact. It would have only a tepid historical interest … if it were not for the circumstance that, before it became a purely historical fact, it was worked into the foundation and framework of what is called the civil law ….” Max Radin, Handbook of Roman Law 1 (1927).
“Roman law is not only the best-known, the most highly developed, and the most influential of all legal systems of the past; apart from English law, it is also the only one whose entire and unbroken history can be traced from early and primitive beginnings to a stage of elaborate perfection in the hands of skilled specialists.” Hans Julius Wolff, Roman Law: An Historical Introduction 5 (1951).
