The Expansion of the Common Law

2002. ISBN-13: 9781584771692; ISBN-10: 1584771690. Pollock, Sir Frederick. The Expansion of the Common Law. Originally published: London: Stevens and Sons, Limited, 1904. vii, 164 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 9781584771692; ISBN-10: 1584771690. Hardcover. New. $22.95 * The Preface describes the work as "a rapid survey of a wide field." The book is also interesting for the essay "The Vocation of the Common Law" based on an address to the Harvard Law School Association, June 25, 1895, in which Sir Pollock calls for a reciprocal legal arrangement between the judges of the United States and Great Britain when merited by an important matter at hand. He compares the legal relationship of Great Britain and the United States to that of Great Britain and British India. His argument concludes "There is no reason why we should not live in hope of our system of judicial law being confirmed and exalted in a judgment-seat more than national, in a tribunal more comprehensive, more authoritative, and more august than any the world has yet known." (p. 21) With an appendix giving a summary view of Anglo-Saxon law before the Norman Conquest. Sir Frederick Pollock [1845-1937] was one of the greatest British judges and legal scholars of his day. His treatises on contracts, jurisprudence the common law and other subjects did much to clarify and systematize English law. Several of these were standard texts that went through several editions. He is also remembered for his collaboration with F.W. Maitland on The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I and his correspondence with Oliver Wendell Holmes, which was published posthumously as The Holmes-Pollock Letters. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and admitted to the Bar in 1871. He taught at the University of Oxford from 1883-1903.