"Our lady the Common Law will note other people's fashions and take a hint from them in season, but she will have no thanks for judges or legislators who steal incongruous tags and patches and offer to bedizen her raiment with them. Assimilation of foreign elements, we have already seen, may be a very good thing. Crude and hasty borrowing of foreign details is unbecoming at best, and almost always mischievous. When you are tempted to make play with foreign ideas or terms, either for imitation or for criticism, the first thing is to be sure that you understand them."
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University of Cambridge alumniJuristsUniversity of Oxford facultyFellows of the British AcademyLegal scholars
Original Language: English
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The Genius of the Common Law (1912), p. 116
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sir_Frederick_Pollock%2C_3rd_Baronet
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Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet
Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet PC FBA (10 December 1845 – 18 January 1937) was an English jurist best known for his History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, written with F. W. Maitland, and his lifelong correspondence with US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles.
13 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet →
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