Frederick Pollock

“ We have an elaborate law of property, but when it comes to the practical protection of our rights we find that we can recover our property only by complaining of a wrong done to our possession or right to possession. The law puts the actual possessor in the first line, and allows an owner definitely out of possession to sue only for "injury to the reversion," though an owner who can resume possession at will is indeed more favourably treated. Its remedies are made efficient, but at the cost of straining the theory at various points. ”

“ The first business of a League of Nations is to secure its members against military aggression. Every member must pledge itself not to take the law (or what it deems to be the law) into its own hands against any other, and to aid the others, at need, in case of attack from without. The next duty is to provide regular and equitable means of settling disputes. Surrender of the liberty to assert one's claims by force can only be in exchange for reasonable assurance of judgement and justice. ”

“ Doubtless the ideal is a League embracing a morally transformed Germany and a group of East European States differing in both moral and material aspects from the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire. But meanwhile the League need not command the military power of the whole world. Enough for our day if it wields so much warlike strength, and so well organized, as to make defiance of it manifestly unpromising. ”

“ Maine warned his countrymen against the insularity which results from ignorance of all law and institutions save one’s own; his example has shown the benefit of the contrary habit. His prominent use of Roman law and the wide range of his observation have made his works as intelligible abroad as at home, and thereby much valuable information—for example, concerning the nature of British supremacy in India, and the position of native institutions there—has been made the property of the world of letters instead of the peculiar and obscure possession of a limited class of British public servants. ”

“ On the whole the modern doctrine is to some such effect as the following:—
The proposer of a contract can prescribe or authorize any mode, or at least any reasonable mode, of acceptance, and if he specifies none he is deemed to authorize the use of any reasonable mode in common use, and especially the post. Acceptance in words is not always required; an offer may be well accepted by an act clearly referable to the proposed agreement, and constituting the whole or part of the performance asked for—say the despatch of goods in answer to an order by post, or the doing of work bespoken ”

“ At twenty-two and a half months, besides the dramatic play with the doll, we have now some quasi-dramatic imitation of grown-up people's action. For some time the child has been accustomed to bring the newspaper to the breakfast-table, and she always pretends to read it herself before handing it over. ”

“ They forget that some renunciation of individual right and discretion is the foundation of every agreement, public and private, that is to govern future action. All binding promises, great or small, restrain the promisor's freedom. ”

“ But his Cambridge time was fruitful in other ways. He was already acquainted with Sir Henry Maine (q.v.) , six years his senior, and then newly appointed to the chair of civil law. This acquaintance now ripened into a perfect friendship, which ended only with Maine’s death in 1888. No two men’s intellectual tempers ever presented a stronger contrast. As Stephen himself said, it took them a long time to know when they really agreed. Maine was subtle, swift and far-reaching; Stephen was massive, downright, indefatigable and sincere even to unnecessary frankness. ”

“ For the practical purposes of modern law we may divide torts into three groups, wrongs of a personal character, wrongs affecting property, and wrongs affecting person and property, either or both. Under the first group come the wrongs of physical violence and restraint, namely, assault and false imprisonment; then the wrong done to men's good name by libel and slander, in which kind there are sundry curious and not wholly rational distinctions ”

“ Eights cannot be made out of nothing any more than mechanical work; as surely as there is no action without reaction in physics, you cannot create rights in politics without imposing duties and limiting freedom of action somewhere. ”

“ When a servant is injured by the act or default of another servant working under the same employer, the general rule of liability has been largely modified in the employer's favour, on grounds which have neither been consistently expounded nor generally received as satisfactory. ”

“ The child had been told, half in joke, that cabs were dirty as compared with her perambulator. For some days she had been accustomed to say "dirty" on the mention of cab, "clean" on the mention of perambulator. Now she made the whole statement for herself: Kábz dati klam [1] klin ("cabs dirty, peram’ clean") . She still talks constantly to herself, and with a continuity giving more or less evidence of continuous trains of thought. I am informed of dramatic conversations with her doll, such as pretending to make it look at things, and describing them to it. ”

“ A rule which can take effect against the judicially known will of the parties is not a rule of construction or interpretation, but a positive rule of law. However artificial some rules of construction may seem, this test will always hold. In modern times the courts have avoided laying down new rules of construction, preferring to keep a free hand and deal with each case on its merits as a whole. It should be observed that the fulfilment of a contract may create a relation between the parties which, once established, is governed by fixed rules of law not variable by the preceding agreement. ”

“ How, then, shall the League of Nations be organized? Obviously by solemn express convention, a convention whose binding force must depend on the renouncement by every party to it, in some measure, of independent sovereign power, and in particular of the right to be judge in one's own cause. For the plan of merely persuasive authority, which any party may obey or disregard at his own discretion, has been tried and found wanting. ”

“ Again, there are cases where an agreement may be made and performed without offending the law, but on grounds of “public policy” it is not thought right that the performance should be a matter of legal obligation, even if the ordinary conditions of an enforceable contract are satisfied. A man may bet, in private at any rate, if he likes, and pay or receive as the event may be; but for many years the winner has had no right of action against the loser. ”

“ The Employers Liability Act of 1880 has remedied the most obvious hardships consequent on the decisions, but only by way of particular exceptions, so that the law as a whole, if more just than it was, is much more intricate, and does not appear to rest on any intelligible principle. ”

“ Like the reforms of the Liquor Control Board and all other rational reforms, it has enemies or treacherous friends in the camps of opposite extremes. A handful of chauvinists, whose only war aim seems to be to make plunder of the battered and discredited shining armour of Prussianism for their own wear, denounce it with their shrillest screams as a pacifist fad. A handful of pacifists and semi-pacifists offer their insipid lip-service with the purpose of taking out all the backbone and converting a drastic remedy into a futile anodyne. ”

“ Contract and conveyance, again, are distinct in their nature, and sharply distinguished in the classical Roman law. But in the common law property in goods is transferred by a complete contract of sale without any further act, and under the French civil code and systems which have followed it a like rule applies not only to movables but to immovables. In English law procuring a man to break his contract is a civil wrong against the other contracting party, subject to exceptions which are still not clearly defined. ”

“ One must do certain things at one's peril, if at all, though the doing of them is not in itself unlawful; others are done not at one's peril, and yet under a wider responsibility than the common run of lawful acts. It is not wrong to make an artificial reservoir of water on one's own land; but the landowner who does so must answer for all damage, though no failure in due diligence be shown, if the water escapes by any cause which reason able human care could possibly have provided against. ”

“ Their meeting will be a wholly different affair from the Hague Conference, where the chief aim of one Great Power was to have as little done as was decently possible, and that of some lesser ones to magnify their own importance at all costs. When difficulties are faced by capable men not divided on any fundamental principle, and determined to reach a working agreement, they have already lost half their terrors. ”

“ Nothing can be learnt, of course, from the word itself. It is merely the French word for "wrong," specialized into a technical meaning by a process which was completed only in the latter years of the 17th century and the earlier of the 18th.
The early common law had no theory of obligations in the Roman sense, and hardly any theory of contract. Its remedies were directed either to the restitution of something which the defendant unjustly detained from the plaintiff were it land, goods, or money or to the repression of violent wrongdoing. Only the former class of remedies was purely civil ”

“ The rights created by contract are personal rights against the promisors and their legal representatives, and therefore different in kind from the rights of ownership and the like which are available against all the world. ”

“ Not that their willingness to join a league of nations, unless Germany is to be the head of it (for that is what their official utterances indicate) , is to be counted on. The only kind of partnership we ask for or can accept is one in which no single Power may be dominant. In the least favourable event a reinforced and regularly organized league, based on the present military union of the Western Powers and excluding the Central Powers, would in all ways be a great step in advance, and far more effectual for restraining future aggression than unorganized alliance or understandings. ”