Henry Sumner Maine

The young Maine

Sir Henry James Sumner Maine (born August 15, 1822 in Kelso , Scottish Borders , Scotland ; † February 4, 1888 in Cannes , France ) was a British anthropologist , lawyer and legal historian who made an important contribution to the codification of Indian law under the English Colonial rule. Today he is considered to be one of the founders of legal sociology and legal anthropology .

Life

Maine was a student at Christ's Hospital School in Cambridge and later at Pembroke College , where he distinguished himself particularly in classical studies and mathematics. Maine received his Bachelor of Law (BA) in 1844. He taught as a tutor at Trinity College until he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge in 1847. In 1850 he also received the "Call to the bar" of the Lincoln's Inn , one of the four inns (comparable to the appointment as a fully qualified lawyer ). Two years later he became the first reader of Roman law at the Inns of Court . He moved to London and gave up the professorship at Cambridge in 1854. He focused on his publications, helped found the Saturday Review , to which he also contributed articles, and published his most important work, Ancient Law , in 1861 .

From 1862 to 1869 he participated as a member of the government in India in the preparatory work for a codification of the law. In addition, he was Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta from 1863 to 1869 . In 1866 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1869 he returned to England and was appointed Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence for historical and comparative law at Oxford . He held this position until he was elected Master of Trinity Hall at Cambridge in 1877 . He spent the rest of his career in Cambridge.

Henry Sumner Main died on February 4, 1888 in Cannes , southern France, where he was also buried.

Maine's view of the development of legal history is characterized by the catchphrase From status to contract (“From status to contract”), that is, from the medieval class society to the liberal civil society. His political view was anti-democratic.

Among the recipients of his work are Ferdinand Tönnies and the late Karl Marx .

Honors

Main was knighted in 1871. In 1874 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society .

Works

• Ancient Law (London 1861; new edition by Sir Frederick Pollock 1906; reprint 1930 ( Wikisource )).
  • The old law: its connection with the early history of society and its relation to modern ideas. ( Ancient law , German) Ed. And transl. by Heiko Dahle. Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verl.-Ges. 1997; ISBN 3-7890-4774-0
• Villages Communities in East and West (1871; reprint 1890)
• Lectures on the early history of Institutions (1875; reprinted 1890; online )
• Early Law and Customs (1883; reprinted 1890)
• Popular Government (1885)
  • The volksthümliche government ( Popular Government , dt.) Trans. Paul Friedmann. Authorized German edition. Springer, Berlin 1887; uqac.ca (French)
• International Law . 1890 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive )
• Ancient Law: Its Connection With the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas . John Murray, London (1861) Wikisource
• Lectures on the Early History of Institutions . John Murray, London 1875
• The Effects of Observation of India on Modern European Thought. The Rede Lecture Delivered Before the University of Cambridge on May 22, 1875 . (PDF; 2.97 MB) John Murray, London 1875
• Henry Sumner Maine: International Law. A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge 1887 . John Murray, London 1915

literature

• Karuna Mantena: Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-12816-0 .
• Anselmo Cassani, Diritto, antropologia e storia: studi su Henry Sumner Maine . prefazione di Vincenzo Ferrari, Bologna / Clueb 2002.
• Alan Diamond (Ed.): The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine: A Centennial Reappraisal . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [u. a.] 1991 (Trinity Hall Henry Maine Centenary Conference; 09.1988); ISBN 0-521-40023-6 (with bibliography)
• George Feaver: From Status to Contract: A Biography of Sir Henry Maine 1822-1888 . Longmans Green, London 1969
• Paul Vinogradoff: The teaching of Sir Henry Morgan . 1904
• Leslie Stephen : Maine . In: Dictionary of National Biography . 1893
• ME Grant Duff: Sir Henry Maine: a brief Memoir of his Life ... with some of his Indian speeches and Minutes Selected and Edited by Whitley Stokes. John Murray, London 1892
• Ders .: Notes from a Diary . passim
• Frederick Pollock: Sir Henry Maine and his Work . In: Oxford Lectures . 1890;
• Ders .: Sir H. Maine As a Jurist . In: Edinburgh Review , July 1893;
• Ders .: Introduction and Notes to New Ed. of Ancient Law . 1906
• Alfred Comyn Lyall and others. In: Law Quarterly Review , Volume IV, 1888, p. 129

Web links

• Literature by and about Henry Sumner Maine in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 3, 2010 ; accessed on January 24, 2014 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Henry Sumner Main, Ancient Law and the Origins of Human Society ; New England Review; Volume 32, Number 1, 2011; Pages 184-187 | 10.1353 / ner.2011.0017; Introduction of the author ; Retrieved July 16, 2014.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} website of the Darwin Correspondence Project; Henry James Sumner Maine ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on July 15, 2014.