ABSTRACT
Individualism in legal science, as distinguished from law, had its origin in the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth century in the rise of theories of natural rights. Two main factors in the rise of individualism may be recognized, namely, the emancipation of the middle class and Protestantism. This chapter considers that the middle class has been dominant elsewhere and that Puritanism has given a peculiar character to the middle class of England and America. In the law of torts, few doctrines have been more irritating than those of assumption of risk and contributory negligence, as applied to injuries to employees. Again in criminal law, one of the problems is the individualization of punishment, the adjusting of our penal system to the criminal rather than to the abstract crime. It is, however, in application and administration of the law that Puritanism has produced the most serious results for the legal system of today.
