Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2016
Europeans have long justified a right to something or other by invoking ‘prescription’ (that is, the creation of a legal entitlement by the passage of time). Yet for all the importance of prescription in the creation of international geopolitical order, no genealogy of the idea has emerged from historical or legal scholarship. This article will explore the relationship between prescription and empire within private, public, corporate, and ecclesiastical legal contexts. The idea of prescription is then considered within the specific ideological context of European imperialism between 1580 and 1640, when a series of diplomatic disputes and intellectual debates were had in Europe principally regarding maritime navigation and foreign dominion by ‘donation’. The metamorphosis of prescription in legal and political thought from Justinian (483–565) to Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) is therefore explored. Additional colour is given to this intellectual history by contrasting how corporate interests in North America attempted to justify their foreign land holdings in forts, ports, and hinterland by invoking ‘prescription’ during the early stages of colonial expansion. The case will be made for historians of early modern imperialism and international law to take closer notice of the opportunism of those prepared to justify prescription in theory and practice.
The first draft of this article was prepared as a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. Warm thanks must be offered to that institution, and more particularly to the community of scholars accommodated within it during the summer months of 2015. This piece has been amended subsequently following the generous advice of Carlos Espaliú Berdud, Richard Connors, Andrew Fitzmaurice, Mark Jurdjevic, Paul G. McHugh, Lauri Tähtinen, and, most helpfully, the anonymous reviewers for this journal. Finally, thanks be to Professor Phil Withington for his patience throughout this process.
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23 Justinian, Codex, i, 2: 23.
24 Liber extravagantium decretalium, in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg (2 vols., Graz, 1959), C. 16, q. 3.
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32 See, for example, Tractatus de praescriptionibus (Cologne, 1590).
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34 Ibid., iii, p. 186.
35 Thereafter, in the common law, writes Holdsworth, ‘it came to be thought that prescription was based not so much on a personal law in favour of the person seised, as on the fact that such immemorial user was conclusive evidence of a grant made before the time of legal memory’. Holdsworth, History of English law, iii, pp. 169–70. See, for a wider treatment, Thomas Arnold Herbert's Yorke Prize Essay of 1890, published as The history of the law of prescription in England (Cambridge, 1891).
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38 Ibid., p. 166; Alan Cromartie, ‘The idea of common law as custom’, in Perreau-Saussine and Murphy, eds., The nature of customary law, pp. 213–14. Both refer to an entry in the year book from Henry VI's time which established two kinds of prescription: ‘one which extends throughout the whole realm, which is properly law; and another which some county, or some town, city or borough has had for time’.
39 Christopher Saint German, Doctor and Student, ed. William Muchall (Cincinnati, OH, 1886 [1518]), pp. 5, 79, and esp. 290, where the superiority of the ‘constitution’ over ‘prescription’ is likened to that of the ‘law’ over ‘custom’. Swayne's Case (1609), 8 Co. Rep., 64: ‘And note a Difference between Prescription which is made in the Person of any, as he and all his Ancestors, &c. or all those whose Estate he hath, &c. and Custom which lies upon the Land, as infra Manerium talis habetur Consuetudo, &c., and this Custom binds the Land, as Gavelkind, Borough-English, and the like.’
40 See Brett, Liberty, right and nature.
41 D. Fernandi Vasqvii Menchacensis, Controversiarvm illvstrivm (Venice, 1564). This is the edition reproduced in the Cuesta publication of the Controversies (4 vols., Valladolid, 1931), from which the following passages are drawn.
42 Ibid., ii, c. li, nos. 14–16.
43 Ibid., ii, c. li, nos. 20, 27; see also, c. lxxv, no. 3.
44 Ibid., ii, c. lxi, nos. 1–2; c. lxv, esp. nos. 1, 15–16, 19; c. lxviii; c. lxix; c. lxxviii.
45 IIbid., ii, c. lxvii, esp. nos. 5–7; c. lxxvii, no. 7.
46 Ibid., ii, c. lxxxii, no. 21: ‘Ergo cum nostri potentissimi Hispaniarum reges Hispaniarum regiones, homines, populos a Maurorum Sarracenorumque imperio & ditione proprio suorumque civium sanguine effuso virtute bellica liberaverint, & per tempus cujus initii memoria non est supremae ditionis ac imperii jus reddiderint, Romano posthabito imperio, non dubium est quin id jure fecisse intelligantur…& tempore cujus initii, &c. hanc supremam potestatem Hispariarum reges quaesierunt…sed nos advertimus quod etiamsi tempus immemoriale non praeteriisset, & etiam si ea justa causa quod a Mauris virtute bellica hanc regionem reges nostri liberassent, cessasset, adhuc de facto licuit se a Romano imperio subducere, cum constet Romanum imperium orbem vi & armis subjugasse ac subegisse, non autem conciessione onerosa tale imperium quaesisse ut patet ex superioribus.’
47 See Ibid., ii, c. li, nos. 37–8, a claim which appears in relation to the subordination of ecclesiastical corporations to the king of Spain after the vanquishment of infidels.
48 Ibid., ii, c. lxxxii, no. 9.
49 Ibid., ii, c. lxxxiii, nos. 30–1.
50 Ibid., ii, c. lxxxiii, nos. 30–1.
51 Ibid., ii, c. lxxxix, nos. 15–16, 22, 30–1.
52 Ibid., ii, c. lxxxix, no. 32: ‘…& quamvis ex Lusitanis magnam turbam saepe audiverim, in hac esse opinione, ut eorum rex ita praescripserit navigationem Indici occidentalis ejusdemque vastissimi maris, ita ut reliquis gentibus aequora illa transfretare non liceat, & ex nostrismet Hispanis vulgus in eadem opinione fere esse videatur, ut per vastissimum immensumque pontum ad Indorum regiones, quas potentissimi reges nosti Hispaniorum subegerunt, reliquis mortalium navigare, praeterquam Hispanis jus minime sit, quasi ab eis id jus praescriptum fuerit, tamen istorum omnium non minus insane sunt opiniones, quam eorum qui quoad Genuenses & Venetos in eodem fere somnio esse adsolent, quas sententias ineptiri, vel ex eo dilucidius apparet, quod istarum nationum singulae contra se ipsas nequeunt prascribere, hoc est, non respublica Venetiarum contra semetipsam, non respublica Genuensium contra semetipsam, non regnum Hispanoum contra semetipsum, non regnum Lustitanorum contra semetipsum…esse enim debet differentia inter agentem, & patientem, ut dictis juribus’.
53 Ibid., ii, c. lxxxix, no. 33; see also ii, c. li, nos. 32–4.
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91 For this reason, it seems significant not only that Edmund Burke, in the oration cited at the outset of this article, would prefer to think in terms of prescription rather than custom in relation to the English constitution, but also that he would do so in order to justify the ‘legislative body corporate’ of the Commons.