The “legal origins” scholarship of the past decade has created controversy both in its application of quantitative methods to comparative law and in its claims that common law is better than civil law for economic development. These controversies have unleashed a storm of criticism by...

Glanville Williams' proposal to use the common law defence of necessity in cases of euthanasia has not been taken up. Williams saw the best chance for his proposal in cases where the doctor is faced with ‘the over¬whelming necessity of relieving unbearable suffering in the last extremity,...