| Summary: | David Ibbetson left a deep mark on 1990s Oxford. I remember clearly his intricate and well-attended lectures on the history of obligations, exploring ideas that were to inform the classic monograph just around the corner.[1] I prized those tightly organised, smudgily printed pages of comment on my draft chapters sent ahead of supervisions. I would open the notes arriving from Magdalen with great anticipation, looking forward to discussing the contents with David, and knowing that his lines would set me off into fresh discoveries in libraries and archives for a good few weeks or months. David emphasised to his legal history students the wider horizon of civilian and philosophical influence within the common law, whilst helping us enter the details of pleading, forensics and court exchanges from which the practical justice system was built. His friendly engagement and unfailing courtesy showed us all by example how to learn and debate together in the search for durable truths. ‘How to enter into the Roman law as a newcomer from Australia?’ I asked him early on, not a little daunted. ‘Start with Buckland,’ David told me. ‘He sometimes writes like the engineer he once was. But it’s really good scholarship.’
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I am sure that the Pauline precept recorded in D 50.17.168.pr was written with David in mind.
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