Abstract

Four stages in the development of law with respect to morality and morals are generally recognized. First, is the stage of undifferentiated ethical customs, customs of popular action, religion, and law, what analytical jurists would call the pre-legal stage, Law is undifferentiated from morality. Second, is the stage of strict law, codified or crystallized custom, which in time is outstripped by morality and does not possess sufficient power of growth to keep abreast, Third, there is a stage of infusion of morality into the law and of reshaping it by morals; what I have called in another connection the stage of equity and natural law. Fourth, there is the stage of conscious law making, the maturity of law, in which it is said that morals and morality are for the lawmaker and that law alone is for the judge. As soon as law and morality are differentiated a progression begins from moral ideas to legal ideas, from morality to law. Thus in Roman law by the strict law manumission could only be made by a fictitious legal proceeding, by entry on the censor's register, or by a formal provision in a will. An irregular manumission was void.

Keywords: Morality to law; Equity; Roman law; Legislation; Potential law; Maturity of law