Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/14

10 public services; 3, finance; 4, the classes of persons; 5, civil law; 6, administration; 7, police; 8, penal law. It contains about 38,000 articles, each of which is referred to some preexisting ordinance. In the United States the first experiment at a legislative remodelling of the entire law was made in Louisiana. That state was originally a French colony; it was afterward ceded to Spain, when the Spanish law was introduced, but again reverted to the French, and from them was acquired by the United States. The confusion of laws introduced by these numerous changes of government made a revision necessary, and a code was prepared and adopted in 1806-'8, which did not, however, supersede the ancient laws, except so far as they conflicted with it. A further revision was found necessary, and in 1822 commissioners were appointed for that purpose, who reported a complete civil code, which was adopted in 1824. Mr. Edward Livingston, one of the commissioners, and who is understood to have had the chief part in the compilation, had been familiar with the common law, and introduced from it many valuable provisions, though the basis of the work was mainly the French civil code. Mr. Livingston also reported a penal code, which was received with favor by the legislature, but not formally adopted. It brought to its author great reputation, especially in Europe. A penal code and code of procedure have since been adopted. The most important, however, of the attempts at codification which have been made in the United States are those of the state of New York, which had their origin mainly in the able and persistent efforts of David Dudley Field, which he began in 1839, by a public letter on the subject, addressed to Gulian 0. Verplanck, then a state senator, and continued by a series of addresses to legislative committees, of articles in the newspapers, and of pamphlets. The result of this agitation was that the revised constitution of New York, adopted in 1846, had two separate provisions in relation to codification. The first directed the appointment of three commissioners to reduce into a code the whole body of the law of the state, or so much thereof as might be deemed expedient. The other directed the appointment of three other commissioners to revise the rules of practice and pleadings in courts of record. Both commissions were filled by the legislature in 1847. The practice commissioners made a partial report on Feb. 29, 1848, containing an incomplete code of civil procedure, in such shape as to cover the principal reforms proposed in the practice of courts of record in civil cases, and this report was immediately adopted by the legislature. The complete codes of civil and criminal procedure were not reported until Dec. 31, 1849, and were never adopted by the legislature, although some portion of the amendments suggested by the commissioners were gradually incorporated by legislation into the text of the original and incomplete code enacted in 1848. On April 6, 1857, the legislature created a new commission to prepare codes of all the law not covered by the reports of the practice commission, and appointed David Dudley Field, William Curtis Noyes, and Alexander W. Bradford the commissioners, for a term of five years, which was afterward extended for three years further. They reported a political code, a penal code, and a civil code. These codes have not up to the present time been adopted by the legislature of New York; and indeed, although reported by committees, the legislature has always been too much occupied with special legislation to give the necessary time for their consideration. The code of civil procedure, in whole or in part, has been adopted into the laws of 23 states and territories of the Union, viz.: New York, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, California, Oregon, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, and Arizona. It has also been adopted for the consular courts of the United States in Japan. The code of criminal procedure has been adopted in ten or more states and territories. In California a code commission created by the legislature reported in January, 1872, a complete series of codes framed upon the basis of the projected New York codes, all of which were adopted by the legislature, to take effect on Jan. 1, 1873. This consisted of a political code, a civil code, a penal code, and a code of civil procedure; the practice in criminal cases being regulated by the penal code. The territory of Dakota in 1864 also adopted the civil and penal codes of the New York commissioners. The principal feature of the code of civil procedure thus adopted in New York and other states was the entire fusion of law and equity by which the same principles were for the first time in the history of New York, or of any other states inheriting the English practice, applied to all species of actions. The courts of Pennsylvania had from the organization of the state decided actions at law upon the principles of equity, but they have never been clothed with all the powers of courts of equity as defined by the English practice. The union in one tribunal of all the powers belonging to a court of chancery as well as to a court of common law, and the application of all the principles of both systems to every controversy arising before the courts, was therefore an absolute novelty in 1848 in any state or colony founded by Englishmen and inheriting English law. The practice in English law courts being entirely different from that of courts of equity, it was necessary to devise a single and homogeneous system including the most useful parts of each form of procedure, and this was done by the code of civil procedure reported by the New York commissioners. Without this preliminary reform it would have been almost