Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/234

 cision are sought after, and each article or preposition is as much the will of the legislature and as binding upon the courts as are the nouns and verbs.

"Human language is at best defective and ambiguous. Theologians dispute over the meaning of texts of Scripture, and when they have formulated creeds and confessions as setting forth the doctrines of the Scriptures, the dispute begins again over the meaning of the creeds and the confessions. So with statutory law. No matter how clear and simple the language may appear at first sight, doubts will arise, ambiguities will be disclosed, inconsistencies between different sections will present themselves, and a series of never-ending decisions will be inaugurated, construing and interpreting the statute, till each section becomes overlaid with a body of judge-made commentaries forming a new set of precedents and a new jurisprudence. No greater fallacy is indulged in by the advocates of codification than that it will diminish litigation. Statutes breed litigation. Experience demonstrates this. Whatever other merits codifications may have, the diminution of litigation is certainly not one of them. Look at our New York Code of Civil Procedure (our code of practice) with the three bulky volumes of Bliss's Annotations of Decisions construing it, each volume nearly as large as a Webster's Dictionary. Look at the little Statue of Frauds, composed of a few sections with its wilderness of authorities interpreting it. Look at our portion of our New York Revised Statues on Trusts and Powers, and count the cases in each volume of our Court of Appeals Report construing these few sections. The idea that codification is a remedy for uncertainty in the law and that when the law has been written in statutory form, the layman will be able to read and understand it, is a delusion and a snare."