ABSTRACT
Changes in the prevailing economic conditions necessarily involve corresponding alterations in the law. The introduction into mediaeval Italy of economic conditions similar to those prevailing in primitive Germany thus brought with it the barbarian codes of the Teutons. The new and more active economic relations that were springing up in the industrial cities of the Italian peninsula soon became incompatible with the narrow rigidity of feudal law and communal customs, and such a system was found already elaborated in the Roman law. Thus legal history shows us that instead of being the product of abstract reason, or the result of national consciousness, or a racial characteristic, the law is simply the necessary outcome of economic conditions. The phenomena of redistribution in particular, that is to say, the complex relations prevailing among proprietors, called for legal relations equally as subtle pan complex.
