Legal History and Systems

In 393 AD, Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympic Games as part of his campaign to suppress pagan rituals and establish Christianity as the state religion. The games were considered a 'unholy ritual' because of their religious significance to the ancient Greeks.

In 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius I banned human sacrifice as part of Rome's Christianization process. Bullfights, cockfights, and animal sacrifices were not the target of this specific edict. The ban on human sacrifice marked a significant shift away from pagan religious practices.

The first copyright privilege was granted in Venice in 1486 to the printer Lucantonio Giunti. 'Invoice', 'device', and 'crevice' are incorrect words that don't relate to the birthplace of copyright law.

Bushido is the Japanese code of honor, ethics, and etiquette that guided the samurai warrior class in medieval Japan. It emphasized virtues like loyalty, honor, courage, and self-discipline. The other options are Chinese literary works - 'Journey to the West', 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu, and 'The Three Kingdoms'.

(4) Austin defined law as a command of the sovereign.

Historical school of jurists recognised that custom law is superior to delegation, legislation and precedents.

Roscoe Pound said that the end of law should be to satisfy a maximum of wants with a minimum of friction and waste.

The term lex loci is a Latin word, which means 'the law of the place' and it is a shorthand version of the choice of law rules that determine the lex causae, i.e. the law chosen to decide a case.

This definition - 'A legal system is only the sum total of laws and that one only needs to identify a law' - reflects John Austin's positivist approach. Austin viewed law as commands issued by a sovereign and backed by sanctions, emphasizing that law is a closed, logical system that can be identified through formal criteria. This stands in contrast to Bentham's utilitarian approach (more flexible), Salmond's sociological perspective, and Jhering's law-as-social-engineering view. Austin's definition is foundational to legal positivism and analytical jurisprudence.

Opinio juris sive necessitatis (the belief that a practice is legally obligatory) is a required element of customary international law. French legal scholar Francois Geny (1861-1959) contributed significantly to international legal theory and is credited with formulating the concept of opinio juris in the context of identifying customary international law.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) marked the beginning of the modern system of sovereign states and treaty-based international law. It established principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity that became foundational to international law. The Vienna Congress (1815) came much later, while the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) are 20th century developments.

John Austin, the 19th century legal positivist, defined law as 'a command issued by the sovereign, backed by a sanction.' This is known as the command theory of law. Salmond focused on law as the body of principles recognized and applied by the state, Julius Stone on jurisprudence as 'lawyers' extra-legal knowledge,' and Hans Kelsen on the Pure Theory of Law (Grundnorm).

Aquinas recognises four main types of law: The eternal, the natural, the human and the divine. The last three all depend on the first, but in different ways. Were we to arrange them in a hierarchy, eternal would be at the top, then natural and then human. Divine law is not in conflict with natural law, but it reaches human beings by a different route, revelation.