Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/447

 The Editor's Bag

423

material for the successful organization

trained. But there is every reason why their abilities should be made directly useful to the entire community." (See 22 Green

of such an undertaking as that now proposed is much greater than it appears

Bag 114.)

that the supply of high grade juristic

to be only at a casual glance.

Sound

juristic analysis and method, to be sure,

At one or two places Dean Wigmore’s criticisms suggest the possible con

may be of comparatively recent origin

struction that he has conceived the

in this country, and no doubt during the next generation enormous progress may be looked for both in legal science and in all the related social sciences, but that is not saying that the country lacks a respectable supply of scientiﬁc ability or that the best way to stimulate

statement of the American Corpus juris as a work which, once executed, is to

legal scholarship is to postpone measures well suited to bring about its advance ment. If the world had deferred every great scientiﬁc discovery to posterity on the ground that the time was not ripe for it, all scientiﬁc achievement

and all appetite for it would have been completely annihilated. Learning is best advanced by being put to practical

use. Is there any real danger of the authors of the proposed work ﬁxing permanently upon our law an untested and unscientiﬁc juristic analysis and method? Mr. Charles A. Boston’s view is undoubtedly entitled to much respect. He has written :— “I have said the time is ripe. Those who are familiar with the instruction given in the greater law schools know how conscientiously and efficiently the greater minds among the teachers have pondered and expressed the philosophy of their subjects, so as to imbue their students with the philosphic conception of the law as an art, based on scientiﬁc principles, if not, as it is frequently called, a science. The improved methods of general edumtion have invaded the law schools, necessitating a scientiﬁc kind of work on the part of the instructors, who have thus become leaders, occupying an enviable and useful position. which they have created, and fill with ability. Thus far their services have in the main been useful to the community only through the law students they have

stand untouched for years to come, requiring in the opinion of its projectors no modiﬁcation to readjust it to con stantly altering conditions. If this

were to be the case, some of Professor Wigmore’s objections would be fatal for the usefulness of such a codiﬁcation would be outlived within a short time after its appearance, and if there were no prospect of periodical revision there would indeed be grave danger of ﬁxing harmful methods permanently upon legal science. If, however, the large editorial staff which is to stamp Ameri can jurisprudence with the impress of the best juristic thought of our own generation is to be succeeded by a permanent board to have charge of

subsequent revisions, as is earnestly to be hoped, the objections noted would

fall to the ground of their own weight. The results would be, then: (1) a tremendous impetus applied to legal science by the co-ordination of the best effort of the best legal intellects in the

greatest undertaking yet set before them; (2) a more useful law treatise than has

ever been given to the profession in America; and (3) steadily increasing timeliness and utility with each periodi

cal revision, and growing simplicity as the "contrarieties” noted in the original edition would tend to become engulfed in the swelling stream of uniformity. The beneﬁts to arise from

the execution of so “untimely, unsound and

futile”

an

undertaking

possibly be overestimated.

cannot