BACKGROUND
In 1897 Oliver Wendell Holmes said the following in his famous essay, ‘The Path of the Law’: ‘Sir Frederick Pollock’s recent little book is touched by the felicity which marks all his work, and is wholly free from the perverting influence of Roman models’. Warming to the subject, he continues thus: ‘The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books. At least in my day I had my share of such counsels, and high among the unrealities I place the recommendation to study Roman law’. The gravamen of his complaint was that to gain a knowledge of Roman law that would be useful involves so much effort as to render the game not worth the candle. Just about a century later, however, a book would be published that would make the advice of the elders (certainly as far as the law of obligations is concerned) eminently more possible – not only in common-law countries, but everywhere, including the mixed jurisdictions of Scotland and South Africa … (download)
Daniel Visser, ‘Reception in Real Time: Reinhard Zimmermann and the Influence of the German Law of Unjustified Enrichment in Scotland and South Africa’, Tulane European and Civil Law Forum, volume 37. pp 1-25 (2022).
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