A Treatise on Obligations, Considered in a Moral and Legal View

Book excerpt: Translated by Francois-Xavier Martin. Originally published: NewBern, N.C.: Martin & Ogden, 1802. 2 vols. in 1 book. xii (iii-xii new introduction), xii], 364; ix], 315, 1] pp. With a new introduction by Warren M. Billings, Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, University of New Orleans and Bicentennial Historian of the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Reprint of the rare New Bern edition. In the decades before the Civil War this classic treatise was required reading for practitioners, scholars and law students. Martin, an attorney and printer in New Bern, North Carolina, later a distinguished lawyer in Louisiana, gained distinction for this translation. This treatise was an important influence on British and American contract law. Marvin quotes and endorses an assessment by Luther Cushing that includes the following remark by one of Pothier's earlier editors, Andr Dupin: " Pothier on Obligations] is not only a good book of law, but an excellent book on morals; a work of all countries, of all nations; a book, to which antiquity can present to rival but the Offices of Cicero." John Gage Marvin, Legal Bibliography (1847) 578. "The Treatise on Obligations was soon recognized as a major contribution to legal science."--David M. Walker, Oxford Companion to Law 973. ROBERT JOSEPH POTHIER 1699-1772] was arguably the greatest French jurist of the eighteenth century. A brilliant scholar, he is renowned for his treatises on Roman law and the various branches of French civil law, which were primary sources for the French Civil Code. FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARTIN 1762-1846], a Frenchborn lawyer, judge, author, translator, printer and historian, is an important figure in the legal history of the south. His career began in North Carolina. He later moved to the Louisiana territory, where he played the central role in the reorganization of its legal system. Appointed attorney-general when Louisiana became a state, he is considered the father of Louisiana jurisprudence.