Roman-Dutch Law

This law, as it prevails in South Africa, was derived from (1) the privileges granted by the counts of Holland and other feudal superiors; (2) collections of customary law and the municipal ordinances of the towns; (3) judicial decisions; (4) formulas of process; (5) legal treatises and projets de loi; (6) ordinances of the counts; and (7) codifications of provincial law. It is said to be more Dutch than Roman; it has in the most part to be sought in the writings of the great Dutch jurists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but in case of doubt the Corpus Juris Civilis was the ultimate resort. The English law of evidence was introduced and English decition decides the cases in its own way in accordance with local usage and the traditions of its courts; judicial decisions are freely cited there; they are never cited in Ceylon. See Wessels’ History of the Roman-Dutch Law, who complains of “the heterogeneous mass of legal systems” now prevalent in South Africa. See 10 Journal of Soc. of Comp. Leg. 261. N