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Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. By Harold J. Berman. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. viii, 657. Index. $32.50.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Alfred P. Rubin
Alfred P. Rubin*
Affiliation:
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
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Type
Book Reviews and Notes
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 222 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1986

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References

1 For example, with some amusement Berman mentions the current Western practice of refusing to execute a condemned murderer who is insane until he recovers his sanity. Clearly, no deterrent, retributive or reforming purpose is served by deferring the execution. The origin of the rule is said to lie in the church’s insistence that nobody be consigned to eternal suffering until he has had the opportunity to confess his sins and take holy communion (p. 166), acts with religious effect only if undertaken or refused by a person of sound mind.

2 Constantine died with Christian rites in A.D. 337. Whether there was any discrete act of conversion before then is a matter of considerable conjecture by scholars. A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe 73 (1948, Collier Books ed. 1962). Jones says that there is “no manner of doubt” that Constantine was “in some sense converted to Christianity” in 312, not 313.