Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/307

 Review of Periodicals ﬂrlr'cle: on Topics of Legal Science and Related Subject: "American Oorpue Jnrle." Letter by Ed ward D'Arcy of St. Louis, and editorial com ment. 70 Central Law journal 175 (Mar. 4). Mr. D’Arcy indorses the position taken by the Central Law journal (p.

226 supra) and

says:— “I think your article contains the germ of a great idea, which is, if I may attempt to state it, that if we are going to have a reforma tion of our law it must be accomplished by some t mind which understands and is able to elucidate the fundamental principles of the law. As you very well say, the work described in the Green Bag will be nothing else ‘than a collection of exceedingl valuable monographs on special subjects 0 law.’ If our law has to be restated b the three gentle men named, or by any other three, it will probably never be restated. “Justinian made the greatest restatement that has ever been attempted, and it is open to debate whether he would not have done better to have adopted Ul ian entire than to have turned him over to rebonian and his

entire editorial staff and cut him up piece-meal. “Ulpian was a great leader-—dismembered by Justinian. Bacon was the next, only to be treated in the same way by Coke and Blackstone, and the result 15 that we have no scientiﬁc statement of our law today. "Some of us think we see some good in Mr. Hu hes’ Grounds and Rudiments of the Law. An _it seems to me that a question would be pertinent addressed to those who pro

se this

magniﬁcent legal establishment, whet er such a work as Grounds and Rudiments of Law does not contain all that is fundamental in the law, and, if it does not, what it is that it

fails to contain, except immense elaboration." With entire res ct to Mr. Hughes, the work contempla is one of much broader scope than his Grounds and Rudiments of

Law,—one in which it is planned, to quote Mr. Alexander (22 Green Bag 71), “to block out with the ablest ex rt advice obtainable the entire ﬁeld of the w. . . sothat. . . the law on_ a? particular point may readily be ascertarne ." The lan, moreover, is not for the restate ment 0 the law b any three persons. It is

that the work shal be supervised by an edi Vmal board of seven of the ablest experts in the United States, and actually executed by

anassociate editorial board of about twenty eminent specialists; these boards, moreover, wpuld have the assistance of a strong Ad “8017 Council of twenty or twenty-ﬁve of the ablest men in the profession, and of a still

larger Board of Criticism. The ultimate exec utive control, to be sure, is to be vested in

three men, but they are in no sense to be re tried as the authors of the proposed work. e notion that that an e ch-making re statement of the law must 8: accomphshed by one great mind, rather than by any three collaborators, shows a failure to grasp the fact that the American Corpus juris project contemplates a restatement of the law by a large commission of experts, and it also be

trays a mistaken belief in the capacity of one intellect to accomplish more than can pos sibly be achieved b several. Surely Mr. D'Arcy's examples, f'rom Bacon and Coke onward, show a decline rather than an advance in great codiﬁcation of the one-man species, and prove that the expert commis sron method, which was so successfully applied in the making of the German Civil Co, is the logical one to be applied in our own time. Commenting upon t is letter, the Central Law journal approaches the subject from a different point of view, suggesting that for "a eneral synthetical presentation of the whoie law and its great principles" we can have nothing better than Broom's Legal Maxims, Bacon's Ordinances, or Hughes‘ Grounds and Rudiments of Law. For if greater comprehensiveness of treatment be aimed at, a synthetical work, says the Central Law ournal, “becomes immediately involved

in bitter contention that must inevitably discredit its authority and lace it on the level of any other encyclo ia, except in so far as some particular monograph may excel in excellence, as a monograph, anything before

written on such subject." From the fact, however, that what is pro posed is a statement of American law, it is naturally to be inferred either that the pro sed work will conﬁne itself to deﬁning the aw as it is, or that, if it sees fit to treat the

law as it ought to be, simple typographical devices will be adopted to indicate such ints as are disputed or not finally settled. t will not then discredit its own authority. On the contrary, because the product of system atic scientific method, it will gain greater authority from the thoroughness and consist ency of the mode of treatment adopted than any disconnected series of monographs, how ever excellent, could ever possess.

“An American Justinian Needed." Edi torial. Independent, v. 68, p. 485 (Mar. 3). The Independent recapitulates the project of Messrs. Alexander, Kirchwey and Andrews in detail, and concludes:

“The success of the project is contingent upon the establishment of the suggested foun dation for the advancement of juris rudence. Here is an opportunity which sho d satisfy the highest kind of altruism. Greater service can hardly be rendered to our nation or civilization."