Quote#World
Legal business has, from the beginning of time, been profitable - to…
Quote byEdward Jenks · 1861–1939
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter IV, Improved Legal Procedure, p. 40.
English (original)
Legal business has, from the beginning of time, been profitable - to those who have conducted it; because it is concerned with things that touch men's passions very deeply, and because men are willing to pay, and pay highly, for wisdom and skill in the conduct of it. The real merits of the Norman lawyers were, not altruism, but ability, energy, and enthusiasm for their work.
— Edward Jenks
More from Edward Jenks
The man who has been wounded by a chance arrow must not shoot at sight the first man he happens to meet.
But the fact that the word "chattel" has survived as the inclusive legal term for all movable goods, points, not merely to the great importance of cattle in primitive times, but to the importance of the notion of sale or barter in …
It is the glory of English Law, that its roots are sunk deep into the soil of national history; that it is the slow product of the age long growth of the national life.
The thegn who deems an unjust doom is to lose his thegnship. It is a principle which can be widely applied
Only when a disputed point has long caused bloodshed and disturbance, or when a successful invader (military or theological) insists on a change, is it necessary to draw up a code.
Whatever else the Norman Conquest may or may not have done, it made the old haphazard state of legal affairs forever impossible.