Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/491

 American Editorial Comment upon the Corpus Juris Project prove of much higher authority than any general work on jurisprudence now in the hands of the profession. As it will have no authority whatever from legislation, its standing with the pro fession will depend wholly upon its own merits.

It must, therefore, of necessity set

forth with accuracy the existing law on each point in the federal courts and in every state and where the principles in different juris dictions vary, or where the law in any par ticular jurisdiction is unsettled, the true principle must be set forth and sound reasons for its support be_ given. The thing required is not a book of reference, but a statement

of principles sustained by authority and sound reason. While the task contemplated by the authors of the plan is stupendous, there seems to be no sound reason to doubt that, with a force properly organized and adequate funds, a work may be produced of greater merit and higher authority than anything we have at the present time. . . . The production of such a work would be a public service of the highest order. How York American: THE NEED OF A NEW JUSTINIAN

A group of lawyers of high reputation— including Dean Kirchwey of the Columbia Law School-—haVe worked out a plan for organizing in a single legal treatise the vast chaotic mass of American law. These gentlemen say that the service performed for the Roman law by Justinian and for the French law by Napoleon could be accomplished for American law by any millionaire who was inﬂuential and liberal enough to assemble a company of the best lawyers in the country and support their joint labors for a few years at a cost of say, $600,000.

Certainly it is well worth considering whether the prestige given to the Justinian code and the code of Napoleon might not in a great democracy attach to the mere intellectual and moral agreement of repre sentative men standing at the head of their profession. And if it is true that an American Corpus jun's or compendious body of jurisprudence, worked out by a company of leading lawyers, would have authoritative weight before the general bench and bar, Dean Kirchwey

465

and his associates have pointed out an alluring prospect to patriotic men of wealth. . The proposal is to block out the entire ﬁeld of American case law and statute law— state and national—under a logical system of classiﬁcation, so that when the work is published the law on any particular subject may be readily ascertained. The law as it stands is a wilderness traversed by a few beaten paths. The courts are clogged with needless litigation and justice is destroyed or defeated —because the law is a jungle infested with pitfalls and beasts of prey. If private enterprise and professional honor and intellect can give us the legal simplicity that political action has failed to bestow, the country will hail the deliverers and build their monuments. Detroit Pros Pro“: ANOTHER NEW AVENUE TO IMMORTAL FAME FOR THE MILLIONAIRE The American millionaire who foolishly permits his life, his money and his name to perish in the one moment of death singularly neglects his opportunities. New avenues to immortal fame are being oﬁered to him every day. Endowing such humanitarian works as the museum of safety we have before spoken of as a means to undying honor. Pat upon the heels of the suggestion comes that bright legal journal, the Green Bag, with another guidepost pointing the way of riches to immortality. . . . Mr. Alexander would have a board of editors selected from the law school faculties of the country to carry out a plan that held a central place in the mind of Justice James Wilson, one of the ﬁrst and greatest jurists

who have. graced the supreme bench of the nation. He would, to quote Wilson's own words, inaugurate a project "to form the mass of our laws into a body compacted and well proportioned." What such a code might do for this nation, if it could be enacted into law, may be realized by recalling the fundamental relations other codes have had to the world's history; the Pandects of Justinian, which were the basis of all mediawal legislation and of the civil law of today in many countries and are reﬂected in the common law of England and of the United States;

the Code Napoleon,