ABSTRACT
Jurist, historian and pioneer in the study of anthropology as applied to the evolution of legal ideas and institutions, Maine made a considerable contribution to the study of jurisprudence in the second half of the 19th century. Writing with unusual knowledge of the classical Roman tradition, primitive law, Biblical and Indian legal ideas (he had supervised the codification of Indian law as a member of the Governor-General’s Council), he was able to produce a systematic account of the evolution of law. His principal work was Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Earlier History of Society and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (1861), in which he ranged widely over early law and embryonic legal systems. For Maine, history was no record of humanity’s ‘essential reasonableness’; rather, it did reveal the pervasive influence of emotions, deep instinctive reactions and habits. We select from his work two unique concepts: first, the view that legal history may be read as revealing an evolutionary pattern which affects in different measure ‘static’ and ‘progressive’ societies; and, secondly, the idea that within progressive societies there can be traced a movement in individual relationships marked by a change ‘from status to contract’.
