SYSTEMATIZATION OF THE LAW IN ENGLAND IN THE EARLY 17th CENTURY: THE IMPORTANCE OF FRANCIS BACON’S IDEAS

Abstract

Introduction: in the year of the 460th anniversary of the birth of Francis Bacon, an English philosopher and lawyer, statesman and court practitioner, of special relevance is research into Bacon’s contribution to the development of theoretical and organizational bases of the law reform and the technique of law systematization. In his works, Bacon put forward a set of ideas concerning rationalization of common law and novelization of statutory law in early modern England. Purpose and objectives: to identify the features of legal discourse and dogmatic opposition between legal corporations of lawyers of common and civil law; to analyze their influence on the formation of Bacon’s legal worldview; to determine his contribution to the development of the concept of the ‘reform of law’ and the doctrine of the sources of law in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence; to evaluate the content of his theoretical treatises and legislative proposals concerning the systematization of statutory and case law in early Stuart England. Methods: in the course of the study of Bacon’s development as a thinker and his career advancement, we employed methodological approaches such as dialectical, cultural, general historical, sociological, dogmatic. When analyzing Bacon’s legal ideas and doctrines, his legislative projects and theoretical writings, we applied both general scientific methods (system-structural and formallogical, inductive and deductive) and special legal methods of cognition: historical-legal, comparative- legal and formal-legal, as well as methods of legal hermeneutics, interpretation, and juris linguistics. Results: we have formulated the definitions of the ‘reform of law’ and ‘systematization of law’ in the context of the legal discourse of early Stuart England and specifically in the framework of Bacon’s teachings; studied the directions of Bacon’s activity aimed at improving the judicial procedure and evidentiary practice, at unifying the law within the Anglo- Scottish union, and also the special model of the gradual reform of English law developed by Bacon. He defined the proper legal and technical conditions for the systematization of law, the necessary elements of legalistics, and the ‘general part’ in the form of a list of legal maxims andregulis juris provided in his translation. Conclusions: according to Bacon, ‘schematism’ of reforming the law involved several successive stages. We have established the following scheme of legal systematization as the ultimate goal of the legal reform according to Bacon’s plan: review and revision of statutory law – chronological incorporation of statutes and precedents – thematic hybrid codification (or consolidation) – creation of a ‘digest’ (corpus of laws) as a final document.