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 The Green Bag

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ception, which must be due solely to neglect to inform oneself about what one is criticizing before passing judgment upon it.

The Central Law journal said in its issue of Sept. 2: As a matter of fact. "America" has no law, that can be stated. The United States could not give a uniform answer to hardly a single important legal question, unless we permit the federal Supreme Court to declare for us what might be said to be the only pure uniform and thoroughly established system of Ameri can law.

Who has ever maintained that the

United States possessed a uniform body of law? Such a view would be stupid, chimerical, preposterous. The term cor pus jun's does not imply a uniform body

of law.

Our body of American law has

in some respects unity, in others diver

gence, but there is no logical sequence in saying that because laws are not uni form they cannot be stated. The object of the projected statement of the corpus juris is to state the law as it is, to state it in its unity and in its divergence, and this talk about giving a uniform answer to every legal question is deluded.

The National Corporation Reporter said editorially, Aug. l1:— If the purpose is merely to compile a digest of the decisions, or an encyclopedia, in which

the substance of the decisions will be stated in text-book form, the criticism which at once suggests itself is that the scheme involves a duplication of labor and an expenditure of money which could hardly be justiﬁed by any probable superiority in the results of the enterprise over existing works of the same character.

This reveals a misconception readily avoidable, for no proposal has been made

Pocket Code of Evidence (supra, p. 247). Without such compression of materials the proposed work would truly be a senseless duplication of effort, and the

statement of the entire law in the limited number of volumes proposed would be an utter impossibility.

If the plan is not to duplicate the work of text-writers, argues the National Corporation Reporter, there is one other

alternative :— If, on the other hand, it is proposed to con demn or approve doctrines which have met with general or partial acceptance, with a view to inﬂuencing courts and legislatures in the direction of an uniﬁed system of law for all the states-—to make the work a sort of step ping stone to the adoption of a single code of laws for all jurisdictions—then the obvious criticism is that such a work should not be left to a small number of editors, even though the board should have the assistance, as sug gested by Mr. Alexander, of eminent judges and practitioners, to whom parts of the work after completion, but before publication, would be submitted for criticism. Here the ground is less shaky, but our

learned contemporary errs, nevertheless, in supposing that the primary purpose

may be other than that of stating the law with such completeness that the

exception is as easy to ﬁnd as the rule generally prevailing.

The chief ob

ject will be to state the law as it prevails in every jurisdiction of the United States. The selection of particular doctrines for commendation or disapproval will be a secondary matter; it will not be para

mount to everything else as this crit icism assumes.

The outcome might be a code similar to Professor Wigmore’s Pocket Code of Evi dence, which might well serve as a. basis for uniform legislation when conditions

that the law be stated “in text-book

are ripe for uniformity, but the methods

form"; what is contemplated is the

proposed would not on that ground be

adoption of a form more succinct than that of the text-books—a form not un

open to censure as seeking to inﬂuence legislation without recourse to the advice

like to that of Professor Wigmore’s

of a sufficiently large and representative