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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Acquisition Of Living Things By Specification, Ernest Metzger
Acquisition Of Living Things By Specification, Ernest Metzger
Ernest Metzger
Ownership of the product of living things, such as human tissue or cultures developed from human cells, is difficult for the law to determine. Civilian jurisdictions, with their legal heritage grounded in Roman law, offer one solution. Civilian jurisdictions would resolve such cases under the rules of specification. A recent case from the Outer House of the Scottish Court of Session (Kinloch Damph Ltd v Nordvik Salmon Farms Ltd) addresses the problem. The case was properly decided, though the grounds of the decision could be improved. Specifically, on civil law principles, civilian courts ought to award ownership of a living …
Roman Judges, Case Law, And Principles Of Procedure, Ernest Metzger
Roman Judges, Case Law, And Principles Of Procedure, Ernest Metzger
Ernest Metzger
Roman law has been admired for a long time. Its admirers, in their enthusiasm, have sometimes borrowed ideas from their own time and attributed them to the Romans, thereby filling some gap or fixing some anomaly. Roman private law is a well known victim of this. Roman civil procedure has been a victim as well, and the way Roman judges are treated in the older literature provides an example. For a long time it has been accepted, and rightly so, that the decision of a Roman judge did not make law. But the related, empirical question, whether Roman judges ever …