Civil Law Influences on the Common Law. Some Reflections on "Comparative" and "Contrastive" Law

As I'm talking after a dinner preceded by a kind of liquidity which economists have not considered, I'm reminded of a sentence in Sterne's Tristram Shandy: "The ancient Goths of Germany had . . . a wise custom of debating twice everything of importance to the state. That is, once drunk and once sober: Drunk, that their councils might not lack vigor; and sober, that they might not want discretion."