Travelling the High Road with T B Smith: Nationalism and Internationalism in the Defence of the Civilian Tradition
Travelling the High Road with T B Smith: Nationalism and Internationalism in the Defence of the Civilian Tradition
This chapter examines Smith's mentalité, which is necessarily limited and subject to further review because it relies exclusively upon Smith's own writings and an outsider's interpretation of them, and attempts to clarify our image of him and his image of himself. It argues that Smith was not a legal nationalist in the emotional and romantic sense. The suggestion that he was a legal irredentist with a passion to preserve (or reclaim) all parts of Scots law is somewhat overbroad and in part rebutted by his pragmatic positions on codification, on commercial law, on law reform, and his self-assessment of his place as a mixed jurisdiction jurist. The chapter also traces in part the evolution of his comparative law methodology, because it increasingly became outward reaching and non-nationalistic, and is an important indicator of a cosmopolitan mindset which existed in fact, not simply in theory.
Keywords: nationalism, professional career, legal irredentist, Scots law, comparative law
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