preserve the union no matter the cost in American lives, the South might well have won. A northern triumph perhaps required the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.202 The theme of this lecture, as of all gathered here, is the extreme importance of the need for authority in law, and how this need deforms law and its connection with society. So far as we know, conflict of laws was unknown to the Romans: but our sources are defective. With the growth of medieval Italian city states, French local customary law, and the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic, conflict of laws became a subject of engrossing interest. The tradition was to find Roman legal authority. None existed. But irrelevant texts were forced into service. Theories abounded. But we are concerned only with that of the Frisian Ulrich Huber. His theory was his own invention, not accepted to any extent in continental Europe. But Scottish legal education in the th century was pitiful, so Scottish students migrated to the equally Calvinist Dutch Republic. As students will, they bought the books recommended by their professors. Huber’s published lecture notes became one of the commonest law books in late th century Scotland. His treatment of conflict of laws was prominent in his book and became the fundamental basis 202A further counterfactual hypothesis may be envisioned. Story, let us assume, followed Huber correctly and this approach to comity was generally accepted. Nonetheless, somehow the Dred Scott case came before the U.S. Supreme Court, and, let us assume, Taney accepted that Scott was a free man. Lincoln and Douglas had their debates (but in a different form), Lincoln was elected president, secession and the Civil War followed. The main outlines of history would be preserved, but the writing of history would be different. Dred Scott would not have been among the causes of the war. I pose this hypothesis because in discussion with historians I find a reluctance on their part to accept that the doctrine of comity, which was adopted by accident, could have a profound impact on outcomes in the society. Yet historians stress Dred Scott among the causes of the Civil War. IX
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