The Reception of Roman Law into the Anglo-American Common Law of Mixed Goods

This article considers the development of the common law of mixed goods from the middle of the fifteenth century through to the late twentieth. It is a neat example of a Roman legal doctrine being directly received into the common law. That the reception happened when it did – late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth centuries – testifies to the state of the English and American high legal culture at the time, and to the intellectual interests of the legal writers, judges and practitioners who brought about this instance of “Romanisation” in common law doctrine.

The study explains much about the modern state of the law governing mixtures of money and goods. The study also underscores some fundamental similarities and differences in common law and civil law analyses of property, their approach to evidential uncertainty, and the relationship between actions and substantive rights.