Arkansas Supreme Court Library New Resources Guide

"Privately printed for the members of the Legal Classics Library." "Notes from the editors" (30 p.) inserted.
Reprint. Originally published: The spirit of laws / translated from the French of M. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu ; with corrections and additions communicated by the author. Dublin : Printed for G. and A. Ewing, and G. Faulkner, 1751.

In 1580, Montaigne published his famous Essays, with two more books published in 1588 and 1595. In them he sets forth humanist ideas about the importance of asserting “natural judgment,” recognizing humans as fallible and connected to the physical world, and the empirical nature of knowledge. One of his most famous essays, “On Cannibals,” compares the behavior of European colonialists to the “savages” of Brazil. Other essays customs in the context of the horrors of war where he argues that laws can be evil or unjust, but one should follow ancient laws that order society. The Essays are pervaded by Montaigne’s skepticism, learned from reading the Stoics, which “insist[s] that it is the self that is in constant flux and in need of a stable political environment.” He lived by a strict morality and believed that one must act in a way he believes is just while living in an uncertain world.
Wythepedia: https://lawlibrary.wm.edu/wythepedia/index.php/Essays_of_Michael_Seigneur_de_Montaigne

Collection of exceptional articles on different aspects of the law that originally appeared in various American law journals and reviews starting in 1890.

"Portions of the book have appeared, in the same words or in substance, in the Contemporary review, the English historical review and the Harvard law review."--Pref. to 1st edition. "The first chapter, by Prof. Maitland, is new."--Pref. to 2d edition. Originally published: 2nd ed. Cambridge : University Press ; Boston : Little, Brown, 1899.

This volume brings together a series of lectures A. V. Dicey first gave at Harvard Law School on the influence of public opinion in England during the nineteenth century and its impact on legislation. It is an accessible attempt by an Edwardian liberal to make sense of recent British history. In our time, it helps define what it means to be an individualist or liberal. Dicey’s lectures were a reflection of the anxieties felt by turn-of-the-century Benthamite Liberals in the face of Socialist and New Liberal challenges.

Translation of: Les grands systèmes de droit contemporains. Reprint of 3rd ed. Originally published: London : Stevens, 1985.

Reflections on the Revolution in France offers political commentary from the British statesman Edmund Burke, that examines the early stages of the French Revolution.

Long cited in legal cases, Isaac Ray’s Treatise (1838) was a first systematic book in English on the relations of law and psychiatry. “Few, probably,” the author begins, “are aware how far the condition of the law relative to insanity is behind the present state of our knowledge.” An experienced practitioner and administrator, Ray was an exponent of a theory of “moral mania,” resembling the “compulsion” familiar from Freud’s work. Cases of “irresistible impulse,” Ray says, “are not fictions…but plain unvarnished facts.” --Harvard University Press.