Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/388

 A Serious Problem.

355

A SERIOUS PROBLEM. BY PERCY EDWARDS. The difficulty in our profession is not so much to know the Law as to know where to find it. — SHARSWOOD.

MR. CHIEF-JUSTICE SHARSWOOD, this time, the plcbs got the upper hand, they than whom no abler writer and lec got down to business and laid the founda turer upon the code ethical has been pro tion for Roman jurisprudence by the cele duced by this country, must have given brated Law of the Twelve Tables. Little is expression to the above observation some known of even the order or arrangement of thing like twenty years ago. We assume, this statute; but it was there at that time, with the utmost confidence, that so great a and it laid the foundation for the observation jurist knew what he was talking about and of our own Sharswood, as above written. From the writings of various authors, we meant what he said. This proposition of learn that the first three of these Tables the difficulty of finding the law was un doubtedly unfolded to the students of the treated of judicial proceedings; the fourth, University of Pennsylvania at one of his lec of paternal power; the fifth, of heirs, and the subject of succession; the sixth, of property tures while filling an engagement as Pro fessor of Ethics in that institution. It and possession; the seventh, of buildings and meant much then; it means more to us poor fields; eighth, of injuries to persons and disciples to-day. Even at this time when property; ninth, of public and political law; Sharswood was lecturing at Philadelphia, not the tenth, the law relating to sacred rights more than two decades ago, there had not and observances; the eleventh and twelfth yet arrived the age of law-books, the great supplementary or amendments thereto. In England and the United States the lawmeteoric shower of law literature. There was a time when the people were making power is conferred upon two distinct satisfied with the law of the Ten Command departments, — the legislative and the courts: ments, and with Moses as their expounder. the one making statute law; the other con And even these were n't found necessary until struing it according to a rule or constitution, the devil entered into the computation as and establishing its dicta in its published one of the prime factors, and took his posi opinions. The law of Rome grew up in tion at the flies of " all the world a stage," exactly the same method, by a process about as manager thereof. Then fig-leaves and the same in its essential nature, although smiles were no longer considered de rigueur, differing somewhat in external forms, — a and so passed on and off, and law-book portion statutory, and a portion (by far the writers and digesters came on. Not the law- greater) judicial decision, or what Bentham book writers of to-day, mind you. But be sneeringly called " Judge-made law." ginning with the overthrow of the kingly Along came Hadrian, about anno Domini power some time along in the year 400 be 130, and hired a lawyer by the name of Salfore the advent of the Christ, a struggle be vinus Julianus to rearrange the old twelve tween the populas and the plebs in Roman Tables, an cdictum perpetuwn from that time. history, the character of the law partook From thence the succeeding race of lawlargely of a religious spirit. This character writers scribbled away on their labors and was rudely changed with the changing for learning, torturing the profession with their tunes of the patricians; and when, at about treatises and commentaries.