Exemplum Tractatus de Justitia Universali: Sive de Fontibus Juris...
1752 French Pocket Size Printing of Francis Bacon's Essential Tract on Comparative Jurisprudence Bacon, Francis. Exemplum Tractatus de Justitia Universali: Sive de Fontibus Juris, Extractum ex Eiusdem Authoris Opere de Dignitas & Augmentis Scientiarum. Paris: Typis Vincent, [1752]. 12mo. (4-1/4" x 2-3/4"; 11 cm x 7 cm), xxiv, 161 pp, [7, approbation and privilege]. Marbled brown calf, covers framed with gilt triple-rule. Spine with gilt stamped title label, faux bands and floral and geometric decorations. All edges sprinkled red. Pin-hole to front cover, does not impact pages. Marbled endpapers, original silk bookmark. Minor cracking to head of front joint and foot of rear joint, but stable. Small bookplate "Nicholas Wall/ Sometime His Book." to rear pastedown. Foxing to edges. Internally clean. $1,500. * The printed book-label may well indicate the ownership of the distinguished British judge Sir Nicholas Wall, Q.C. (1945-2017). A significant standalone Enlightenment-era printing of Francis Bacon's foundational text on universal justice and the sources of law, extracted from Book VIII of his seminal De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Issued by the Parisian printer Vincent in a beautifully bound pocket format, this 1752 Latin edition holds historical and legal significance as an accessible operational manual for Continental legal scholars operating during the height of the Enlightenment. Bacon's text outlines 97 distinct aphorisms designed to formulate a systematic, predictive science of legislation that transcends local custom and raw political power. Writing in the wake of his political fall as England's Lord Chancellor, Bacon sought to correct what he diagnosed as the twin fatal flaws of European jurisprudence: the chaotic ambiguity of uncodified common law and the detached, impractical abstraction of academic natural law philosophers. By arguing that laws must be clear, certain, accessible, and constantly pruned via inductive empiricism, Bacon effectively laid the groundwork for the modern discipline of comparative jurisprudence. The publication of this pocket edition in Paris in 1752 also carries ideological weight. During the mid-18th century, the French legal system was paralyzed by bitter jurisdictional battles between the absolute monarchy of Louis XV and the provincial parlements (courts). French.
Price: $1,500.00
Book number 86773