The origins of western law from Athens to the Code Napoleon

"The origins of Western Law from Athens to the Code Napoleon charts the horizon of Western legal origins. Eternal Platonic truths versus the Sophists of individual preferences, medieval Realists against Nominalists, natural lawyers of the 17th and later centuries, Montesquieu and other Enlightenment thinkers fighting through principles and personhood - these and many more figures and ideas come alive in this comprehensive survey of the antecedents of our modern legal system. 'This book can be described as non-technical history of legal science. It centers on the recounting of a major and venerable debate - one which grew from the complex intricacies of social participation and philosophical argument in ancient Athens, became the stuff of legend in an elegant French code, and will continue beyond today into laws which must begin to reach into worlds still unknown to us. This theme is the great conflict between people who see law as tending to come from abstract principles that are necessarily right and people who see it as tending to come merely from the changing preferences of those in position to impose their will - preferences that are only preferences in a world in which nothing is necessarily right.' John E. Ecklund, Preface, xxxi"--Book jacket.