'In this monumental work Professor de Visscher attempts to reconstruct the history of the idea of noxality and of the legal rules in which it came to be embodied.(...) De Visscher holds that previous writers (...) worked on the assumption that Roman law knew only one 'system of noxality', essentially the same under the XII Tables and in classical law, whereas the key is to be found in the hypothesis of two distinct procedures, dating from different epochs but the older surviving into classical law alongside of and complementary to, the newer. His whole history divides itself into four stages; pre-legal; an early system of 'legal noxality'; the classical system of 'actiones noxales'; post-classical deformations and conflations. (...) Of all these matters De Visscher gives us a careful and documented discussion. But the essential point of his theory, on which he has been working since 1917, and which he supports with great erudition both romanistic and comparative, is the 'dualistic' hypothesis of a system of 'legal noxality' prior to and separable from the system of the 'actiones noxales'. It is a bold theory, and sometimes he may be thought to preach it too vehemently and to press too hard on ambiguous texts to enlist them definitely in the ranks of his supporters, but there seems to be justification for his claim to have 'fair surgir un système qui paraît logique et cohérent.' (...) There is a copious subject-index to the whole work, a carefully arranged index of texts cited and an admirably clear table of contents.' (A.H. CAMPBELL in The Journal of Roman Studies, 1949, pp.164-166). From the library of Prof. Carl Deroux.