Page:Revised Codes of the State of North Dakota 1895.pdf/3

 PREFACE.

The year 1776 marks an event in our system of jurisprudence hardly less important than was the Declaration of Independence in civil government. In that year Jeremy Bentham published his criticism of Blackstone, which was in fact a criticism of "judge-made" law and an argument in favor of codification. From that time until his death in 1832, in a series of publications covering almost every department of law, Bentham marshalled the arguments in favor of reducing all law to a statutory form. Though codification has been the most prominent subject of legal discussion during the century, it is safe to say that not an argument in its favor has been made which cannot be found in the writings of its first advocate. Unheeded for a quarter of a century, toward the close of his life, Bentham drew to his support a brilliant school, composed of such men as Austin, John Stewart Mill, father and son, Macauley, Romilly, Brougham and Langdale. The extreme conservatism of England and the reaction against all innovation, caused by the atrocities of the French Revolution, prevented the early success of codification. The immediate effect of the teachings of Bentham and his associates was limited to comprehensive reforms in the existing system of law, instead of resulting in the adoption of that system for which he contended.

The writings of Bentham and Austin made profound impression in the United States and were potent factors in producing great reforms in the law of practice and evidence. Codification, however, received only a casual and theoretical consideration at the hands of the great masters of American jurisprudence in the early part of this century. No person appeared among them to take up the subject with the zeal of a reformer. In the thirties it found such an advocate in David Dudley Field. He brought to this cause an enthusiasm akin to that of Garrison in the anti-slavery movement. To it he consecrated his life, placing it above personal gain or professional success. His first pamphlet was published in 1837 and so vigorous was the campaign which he carried on in the state of New York that his reform was made a part of the constitution of 1846. Section 17 of article 1 of that constitution, providing for a commission to codify the substantive law, read as follows:

“The legislature at its first session after the adoption of this constitution, shall appoint three commissioners whose duty it shall be to reduce into a written and systematic code, the whole body of the law of this state, or so much and such parts thereof as to the said commissioners shall seem practicable and expedient; and the said commissioners shall specify such alterations and amendments therein as they shall deem proper, and they shall at all times make reports of their proceedings to the legislature when called upon to do so; and the legislature shall