Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/300

272 272 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. as it is, this doctrine seems to represent far better than the other the enlightened sense of the business world, and the prediction is hazarded that it is destined in its full development to be the doc- trine of the future. But while it seems clear that we are still in the midst of the evolution of this department of corporation law, it is yet not impossible to discover the principles upon which that evolu- tion proceeds. It is for this reason that the writer ventures to dissent from the view of Judge Thompson, that *' the Anglo-Ameri- can law upon this subject " is in a state of "hopeless and inextri- cable confusion," Nor does it s.eem to the writer to be true " that contradictory decisions are constantly rendered by the same courts ; that opposing principles, tending to contrary results, jostle and crowd each other as the ice floes jostle and crowd each other going southward out of Baffin's Bay through Davis Straits ; and that the judge seizes upon one of these principles to-day, and to-morrow upon another, and enlarges it or applies it according to the seeming exigencies of justice in that particular case." It is submitted, on the contrary, that the decisions upon corporate power are suscep- tible of scientific analysis and classification. It is, however, neces- sary that the investigator should give up the attempt to relegate this subject to the realm of moral reform, and that he should be content to see in it only the familiar spectacle of a gradual legal development brought about by a conflict between opposing views of public policy. George Wharton Pepper