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THE JUDGE AS A LEGISLATOR

same way when the question is one of supplying the gaps in the law, it is not of logical deductions, it is rather of social needs, that we are to ask the solution."

Many of the gaps have been filled in the development of the common law by borrowing from other systems. Whole titles in our jurisprudence have been taken from the law of Rome. Some of the greatest of our judges—Mansfield in England, Kent and Story here—were never weary of supporting their judgments by citations from the Digest. We should bc traveling too far afield if we were to attempt an estimate of the extent to which the law of Rome has modified the common law either in England or with us.[1] Authority it never had. The great historic movement of the Reception did not touch the British Isles.[2] Analogies have been supplied. Lines of thought have been suggested. Wise solutions

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  1. On this subject, see Sherman, "Roman Law in the Modem World"; Scrutton, "Roman Law Influence," 1 Select Essays in Anglo-Am. Legal Hist. 208.
  2. 1 Pollock and Maitland's "History of English Law," 88, 114; Maitland's "Introduction to Gierke," supra, p. xii.