ABSTRACT
There are many signs that the common law is imposing itself gradually in like manner upon the French law in Quebec. The established Roman-Dutch law in South Africa is slowly giving way before it as the judges more and more reason in a Romanized terminology after the manner of common-law lawyers. In the Philippines and in Porto Rico there are many signs that common-law administration of a Roman code will result in a system Anglo-American in substance if Roman-Spanish in its terms. Few factors of the first importance appear to have contributed to shape American common law. These are: An original substratum of Germanic legal institutions and jural ideas; the feudal law; Puritanism; the contests between the courts and the crown in the seventeenth century and eighteenth-century political ideas. On the contrary, the nineteenth century was out of line with the common law when it sought to treat the relation of master and servant in any other way.
