Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/55

 THE GREEN BAG

This gentleman little suspected, in all this important piece of legislation has been probability, what a splendid and enduring ascribed to Secretary Root, adding "I can piece of work he was doing. After the not say how authentically." I concur in Civil Commission of five members, headed the opinion he expresses that "it is certainly by Governor Taft, came out to the Islands worthy of so distinguished a lawyer." It to take charge in June, 1900, some friction, becomes apparent from the foregoing that, not, however, of a serious nature, arose though not quite so distinguished as the from time to time between them and the Secretary, the gentleman from Utah afore military authorities, the latter considering said is efficient in drafting of laws, as well the three eminent lawyers among the new as in commanding artillery in action. comers, Messrs. Taft, Wright, and Ide, as At last accounts the Spanish Code of mere high-toned theorists, and the two Substantive Criminal Law was still in force, professors, Messrs. Moses and Worcester though a project to get up an American as mere lucky carpet-baggers. As the code as a substitute, and repeal the old time passed and the situation grew less code bodily, has been pending since the and less harmonious, the disposition of the foundation of the Taft civil government on Taft Commission to consider the military July 4, 1901. The Americans, as may be authorities as unskilled in the law grew readily imagined, had originally come out apace, and having the power to do so from to the Philippines flushed with victory, and the President, the common chief of all, before the passions engendered by the they undid a good deal of what the military Spanish War had subsided; and hence had done. But never did they find fault were inclined to look with disfavor upon with this General Order 58. It stands Spaniards and things Spanish in general. upon the statute books of the Philippine When Judge Taft and his colleagues of the Islands today with a few minor amendments, Philippine Commission entered upon their a monument, largely to Major Young. labors at Manila in 1900, they were no It has been translated into Spanish, and exceptions to this general statement, but, the native dialects, and every lawyer in the on the contrary, felt as the great majority Archipelago, be he Filipino, Spaniard, or of their fellow countrymen did about the American, is familiar with it. In an article matter. which appeared in the American Monthly This original proposal to repeal the Review of Revieivs for September, 1905, my Spanish Penal Code emanated from the successor in office as judge of the twelfth American lawyers of the Commission, who, judicial district of the Philippine Islands, however eminent, were not then familiar Hon. Charles S. Lobingier, of Nebraska, with it. The better acquainted with it we speaks of General Order 58 as "a precise American judges became, the less impera and yet elaborate, humane, and up-to-date tive seemed the necessity for abolishing it code of criminal procedure." Judge Lobin entirely. About Christmas, 1904, the American gier goes on to say that the authorship of judges and the Attorney General, were all Georgia Bar Association) that this work was done asked to read the proposed New Penal by Lieut. Col. Enoch H. Crowder, of the Judge Ad vocate's Corps of the Regular Army. He was under Code, and make suggestions concerning it. that impression at the time, though the impression A committee from our number was ap was not gotten from Colonel Crowder. It has since pointed to prepare suggestions for the new been corrected, some time ago, in a personal letter code accordingly, but the general opinion from Major Young to the undersigned, written at a with us was that there ought not to be an time when neither Major Young nor myself had any special reason to suppose that the subject would entirely new code at all, but only a code built upon the old one by amendment and ever come up again in any public way.