were entirely in the hands of the jurists. As such, some early scholars felt that the legal system was essentially unchanging and archaic. More recently scholars have noticed that some methods of change were laid out within the Brehon laws. In particular, mentions five bases on which a judge must base judgment, and at least three offer some room for change: (legal maxim), (legal analogy), and (natural law) (the other two are , a type of legal verse jurists were trained to create to mark a statement made by someone who knows the law and (scriptural testimony)). It has not yet been studied in detail how exactly these three innovative methods were used. Maxims The use and application of maxims is clearly a location where the principles of Irish law could be recorded. Any number of maxims may be found within the Early Irish Laws and perhaps the reason why we are unable to derive a coherent theory of law from them is that there are a great many different topics. Some do seem to represent a legal theory, such as the maxim in that "no-one is obliged to give something to another for nothing" and that in that "the misdeed of the guilty should not affect the innocent". These maxims do say more than one might think since legal systems often have problems balancing the interests of all. The majority of maxims treat with more specific problems. The main problem with our understanding of maxims is that while one law text tells us that they were used as a basis of judgment we know little else about them; we do not even know how exactly maxims could be used for judgment. A further complication is that we know very little about the origin of maxims (or even what the jurists thought was the origin) and similarly we do not know whether jurists were introducing new maxims regularly or whether all maxims were supposed to be from time immemorial. Natural law Early Irish law mentions in a number of places or natural law. This is a concept apparently borrowed from, or at least akin with, European legal theory, and reflects a type of law that is universal and may be determined by reason and observation of natural action. Neil McLeod identifies concepts that law must accord with: (truth) and (right or entitlement). These two terms occur frequently, though Irish law