Excerpt from The Origin and Growth of the Common Law in England and America: A Study of Private Law, Comparing the Evolution of the Common Law and the Civil Law The work of Sir Henry Maine has to be supplemented bv subsequent investigators. But his illuminating maxim that legal progress has been through Procedure from Status to Contract will never be superseded. I have found in the principle underlying it the explanation which I was seek ing. In the Introduction is a discussion of what constitutes Status, and the book as a whole. Is a develop ment of the theme that law begins with Status and that the difference between the two leading systems is that while the Common Law has been a continuous growth of Contract, the Civil Law has been a gradual refinement of Status. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.