Historical Law-Tracts

Home, Henry

Brossura

ISBN 10: 086597618X ISBN 13: 9780865976184

Casa editrice: Liberty Fund, 2019

In his 1758 Historical Law-Tracts, Henry Home,Lord Kames, combines the natural law framework thatunderlies his Essays on the Principles of Morality andNatural Religion with the “conjectural” or philosophicalapproach to history that would receive its fullesttreatment in his Sketches of the History of Man. In sodoing, Kames presents a history of law as a history of theprogress of humankind from savage to civil society.

This compilation comprises fourteen tracts andnine appendixes that cover criminal law, promises andcovenants, property, courts, the laws of inheritance,and the laws governing creditors and debtors in acomparative and historical arrangement designed toillustrate the principles of human progress. As Kamesexplained in his preface, law becomes “a rationalstudy” only when “it is traced historically, from its firstrudiments among savages, through successive changes,to its highest improvements in a civilized society.”

Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supremecourts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history,political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came throughhis works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with anempirical history of legal evolution.

James A. Harris is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University ofSussex, England.