tage over … all modern countries” and he called Praetor “a unique figure in the history of human progress”.29 Furthermore, the Praetor had an established political legitimacy enabling a constant innovative legal development.The arguments in favour of a possible renewed existence for the Praetor differed in relation to court and legislator.The English court system lacked the ability to systematically sum up “the results of the natural development of the law”, and in addition court law was hampered by its “utterly unsystematic character”.As to legislation Bryce emphasized the negative impact of democracy on the formal quality of legislation, thereby hinting at the problems caused by democratic progress at the end of the century.30 Rather, having the sole responsibility for legislation, the Legislator should not take into account only political considerations, but also the scientific-technical ones. In the Roman Praetor Bryce found a “tentative legislation” supported by its special “legal intelligence”. All in all, it seemed that the modern principles of division of power could not satisfy the scientific and systematic responses to the challenges of the ‘liquid’ modern law. But was it possible to transfer the Roman Praetor to a contemporary legal order? There were a number of political obstacles, whatever political order, and the institution of Praetor “belongs to a world which cannot return”.31 On the other hand, the Roman Praetor had showed “that every civilized nation ought, in some way or other, to provide an organ representing its legal intelligence which shall mould and supervise the gradual and symmetrical development of its law”.Within their institutional framework neither the Legislator nor the court were able to take care of the formal aspects of law or attend to the long term consistency of legal production. On important legal subjects an institution akin to the Praetor would be able to cope with the need for legal changes more efficiently than a court restricted by the division of power, and a Parliament which could not for political and constitutional reasons experiment with legal innovations.The same was true of legal science, even if it was given a creative role, as Bryce did. His experience from Parliament was exactly this: Increased democracy had the effect of increased politization of that political body which in its turn led to a neglect of the technical mechanism of legislation. In sum dag m i chal s e n 189 29 See note 24, above. 30 See eg. Henry Sumner Maine’s fierce attack on popular democracy inPopular Government (London 1885). 31 Bryce, Studies II (1901) p. 707.
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