![handle is hein.beal/mpotwslw0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
A MAP OF THE WORLD'S LAW
John H. Wigmore
Northwestern University
[With separate map, Pl. II, facing p. 120]
MAP of the world's law! Has any one ever seen such a map?
There have been world maps of rainfall and of temperature, of
cereal crops and of timber belts, of population and of illiteracy,
of race stocks and of religious creeds, and of all the fundamental
geologic, zoblogic, economic, and social facts. But of law? We do not
know of any map that has hitherto seen the light in print.
But, a map of the world's laws? There would be millions of laws;
no map could record them. Nevertheless, all these laws fall into
systems of law, and these systems of law are limited in number and
can be mapped. Every nation, every locality, every tribe, throughout
the earth's surface has of course had its customary laws, since the
beginning of social history. But in only a few instances have these
local customs developed into systems. A system of law is a body of
rules covering the elemental institutions of social life, developed by
the thought of a professional class, and connected into a sort of cor-
poreal unity by a certain logical and social consistency. These systems,
when once formed, have held together for centuries and have often
spread from their native area to include widely unrelated peoples.
Today, more than nine-tenths of the world's population live under
the influence, direct or indirect, of less than a dozen systems of law.
Originally, some sixteen systems can be traced in the world's
history; they are sketched in my book A Panorama of the World's
Legal Systems. 1 But of these sixteen some eight have disappeared
as such-the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman,
Celtic, Maritime, and Canon systems. There remain, represented
on the world's surface today, either pure or in combination, the fol-
lowing: Chinese, Hindu, Japanese, Germanic, Slavic, Mohammedan,
Romanesque, Anglican. Besides, there must be added, for notation
on a map, Tribal Custom, for areas where no system had developed.
GEOGRAPHY AND THE LAW
But before explaining the map, a few words should be said as to
the influence of geography in the evolution of law in the earth's peoples.
1 John H. wigmore: A Panorama of the world's Legal Systems, 3 vols., St. Paul, Minn., 1928.
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