8 He promises to tell us throughout the work, which institution is which.

7 вЂThusвЂ™, he tells us, вЂthe Roman people observes partly its own peculiar law and partly the common law of mankindвЂ™. 6 Such remarks are, however, relatively few, and there is certainly no systematic exploration of the similarities and differences between the Roman and non-Roman institutions to which he refers.ДЄs is well known, Gaius does recognize that Roman law is based in part on what he calls ius gentium, which he describes as вЂthe law that natural reason establishes among all mankind is followed by all peoples alikeвЂ™. We learn, for example, that the Galatians had an institution that they regarded as similar to Roman patria potestas, though Gaius, seemingly basing himself on a rescript of the emperor Hadrian, argues that the institution of patria potestas is unique to the Romans. The one work of a Roman jurist that survives almost complete, Gaius' Institutes (written roughly ad 160), does contain a few comparative remarks. Indeed, the Roman jurists devoted the bulk of their efforts, at least the bulk of those efforts that survive, to private law. The Romans certainly were interested in the manipulation of middle-level generalities in private law. Hence, while Aristotle and his school can certainly be said to have been engaged in comparative law, they confined their comparative legal work to what we would call comparative public law. We look in vain in the Greeks for the manipulation of middle-level generalities in private law that characterizes the developed legal systems that comparative lawyers are so fond of classifying. He shared with all the ancient Greek thinkers a seeming uninterest in private law. There is another reason for not making Aristotle the founder of Western comparative law. Hence, there is no continuity between the Aristotelian effort and later efforts at comparative law. The former can be regarded as political theory (or, at best, comparative government), and the latter is not comparative and was lost until quite recently. The fact is, however, that all that survives is a treatise written at a rather high level of generality and an exploration of the constitution of

When we put the Politics together with the information-gathering efforts, there can also be little doubt that what Aristotle and his school were doing should be classified as comparative law. There can be little doubt, however, both that Aristotle espoused the comparative method in the Politics and that he, or his school, or both, engaged in a massive empirical investigation of the governmental systems of a large number of Greek city-states and a somewhat more casual investigation of the world beyond that which spoke Greek. 5 The uncertainty of the dates of the lost works (and of the one surviving one) makes it equally uncertain whether the influential generalities of the Politics were based on intensive empirical study or whether they were the admittedly brilliant products of a first-rate speculative mind informed by a more casual empirical knowledge. 4 Its authorship is hotly debated, but the most recent commentator concludes that it is the work of a student of Aristotle. 3 Only one of the constitutions, вЂthe Athenian constitutionвЂ™, survives, and that by the chance discovery at the end of the nineteenth century of a papyrus in an Egyptian rubbish pit. 2 Aristotle, or more likely members of Aristotle's school, compiled the вЂconstitutionsвЂ™ of 158 Greek city-states, and the same school is probably responsible for a lost work in four books on the customs of the Greeks, Romans, and barbarians. There are more than hints of the comparative method in Aristotle's Politics.

Blood of the ancients code