Mapping the Common Law: On a Recent English Attempt and its Links with Scottish Jurisprudence

One principal difference between the legal traditions of Scotland and England is that, while Scots lawyers have always been committed to a rational structure of the law, English lawyers have generally shown themselves indifferent to legal taxonomy. Nevertheless, Oxford’s Professor Birks has recently edited a treatise on English private law which in effect revives the long-standing Roman institutional scheme, thus ‘civilianising’ the common law and bringing it a step closer to Scots law, which has been relying on this map for centuries. This article sets out to evaluate the merits of his enterprise. To that effect, it primarily examines the triangular relationship between the taxonomies of Roman, English and Scots law.