Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 178 of the American jurist James Coolidge Carter’s incredibly profound, yet unfortunately neglected, (posthumous) 1907 book, Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function:

Had they [ancient Roman legal theorists] studied the facts of consciousness, and learned that conduct was necessarily exhibited in the form of habit and custom, they would have seen that the origin of law rested in a self-governing principle of society; and if they had carefully scrutinised the methods of the judicial tribunals, they would have seen that it [sic] consisted in the study of conduct and its consequences with the view of determining what was in accordance with custom or fair expectation, and that such study was simply the exercise of our ordinary reasoning powers upon the subject of conduct; in this way they would have reached the enlightening conclusion that law was tantamount to custom.

DBx: Pictured here is a bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero.