A Treatise on Obligations Considered in a Moral and Legal View

Translated by Francois-Xavier Martin. Originally published: New Bern, 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 leader of the New Orleans bar, gained distinction for this translation. Known as a source of the French Civil Code and for its influence on British contract law, this treatise led Pothier to write others based on Roman and French law. Marvin quotes and endorses Sir William Jones s assessment of Pothier s treatises and their influence on common law: For my own part, I am so charmed with them, that if my undissembled fondness for the study of jurisprudence, were never to produce any greater benefit to the public, than barely the introduction of Pothier to the acquaintances of my countrymen, I should think that I had, in some measure, discharged the debt which every man, according to Lord Coke owes to his profession. John Gage Marvin, Legal Bibliography (1847) 578.