" In this article I want to trace the development of the treatise tradition in the common law system, and build on an idea suggested but not fully developed by Schulz's study of the literary activity of the ancient Roman lawyers: the close relation between the forms of legal literature and lawyers' ideas of what they are doing, and of the appropriate way for jurists to behave. More radically, I shall suggest that certain literary forms are closely tied to theories about the nature of law itself, and that this is particularly true of the treatise." (extrait, p. 633)