Anglo-Saxon law (Old English ǣ, later lagu "law"; dōm "decree, judgement") is a body of written rules and customs that were in place during the Anglo-Saxon period in England, before the Norman conquest. This body of law, along with early Scandinavian law and continental Germanic law, descended from a family of ancient Germanic custom and legal thought. However, Anglo-Saxon law codes are distinct from other early Germanic legal statements - known as the leges barbarorum - in part because they were written in Anglo-Saxon, instead of in Latin. The laws of the Anglo-Saxons were the first in medieval Western Europe to be expressed in a language other than Latin.
Read more about Anglo-Saxon Law: Overview, Divisions, Statistical Analysis, Influences, Trias Politica, Language and Dialect
Famous quotes containing the words anglo-saxon and/or law:
“The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)