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The Green Bag

will have done no less and will be the greater, in that he devoted his own while they com manded the resources of states."

The Independent:

The plan is commended by such eminent authorities as Elihu Root, Alton B. Parker, Governor Hughes, Justices Day, Moody, and Brewer, James Bryce, Joseph H. Choate, Attorney-General Wickersham, John Sharp Williams, Judges Gray and Grosscup, and Woodrow Wilson. Some of the im portant beneﬁts of such a code are thus

The Green Bag, a leading law magazine, in its February issue, draws the curtain aside and presents a graphic picture of the chaotic condition of our jurisprudence. It sets forth with merciless logic the confusion which results from a federal Congress and forty-six state legislatures adding to and changing, without system or co-ordination, our in herited common law judicature. This con fusion is worse confounded by as many state and national supreme courts, establishing by their precedents tens and hundreds of thousands of precedents, printed as authorities and cited by the bar and the courts as binding precedents, but which have never been adequately analyzed or organized so as to present a complete system of principles. Yet lawyers must examine and marshal them as best they can in the presentation of causes, although they well know that “a precedent can be found for almost any proposition of law, no matter how erroneous." Little wonder is it that litigation is tedious, uncer tain, unsatisfactory and expensive. This is the fundamental cause for most of the criticism of our courts. Lord Bacon said truly: "A country in which the laws are indeﬁnite and uncertain is in iron servitude." The conﬁdence of the people in the general integrity of our courts is not at all impaired; but they have lost their faith that a just decision will surely be reached in every case. If such are the conditions now, what will they be, when in a century, our population will be counted by hundreds of millions, and legal decisions numberless? George W. Kirchwey, dean of the Columbia University Law School, James DeWitt Andrews, long the chairman of the American Bar Association's Committee on Classiﬁcation of the Law, and Lucien Hugh Alexander, of the Philadelphia bar, present in the current Green Bag a plan for the solution of this prob lem from the pen of the latter. After analyz ing the conditions and showing how the problem has bai’ﬂed the profession for more than a century, the plan is unfolded. It provides for organizing the best brain power of our bench and bar for the preparation of a complete, philosophical and adequately co ordinated statement of the American Corpus juris, by which is meant the entire body of our law, national and state. . ..

enumerated :—

“The proposed statement of the American Corpus jun's would tend to bring about uniformity between the diﬁerent states in the administration of justice. It will make the administration of justice more exact and enable the average citi zen to secure cheaper and more speedy justice. "The publication of the American Corpus Jan's, prepared in the way outlined, and representing as it would more than a century of not only the intellect and wisdom of the Federal courts, but of the learned jurists expounding the law from the benches of the appellate courts of every state in the Union, could not but place America in the lead of the world in the ﬁeld of jurisprudence, and enable her to exercise a more potent influence in world councils." Judge J. H. Reed, of Pennsylvania, is quoted as saying:-— _ "Nothing has contributed more to the general unrest, and to the growth of strange doctrines of government and increase of foolish and injurious legislation than the uncertainty of legal decisions. And this uncertainty is largely due to the mass of reported cases, which are increasing by the thousands yearly, and which the practising lawyer and trial judge are compelled (in most cases hurriedly) to attempt to reconcile. In most cases, the best counsel can do in advising is to guess at the probabilities. The client suﬂers by this uncertainty, and there can be no greater public service than is sug gested by your memorandum, for every one, rich or poor, large business man or small trader, even the proverbial widow and orphan are vitally interested in knowing to a practical certainty their respective rights and duties."

AN AMERICAN JUSTINIAN NEEDED