Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/270

 Conceding that the legislator is able and honest and that many of the proposed remedies here mentioned will be to a degree efficacious, what remedy can be proposed which will meet the circumstances squarely and help to build up our statute law?

Let us suppose that the supreme court of the United States was deprived for one instant of all cases, precedents and the body of jurisprudence which has accumulated, what would result? Would not the efficiency of our judiciary be greatly diminished? Yet the striking thing is that the man who makes the law, who fits it to economic conditions, has no such body of guiding principles to help him. His task is tenfold-more difficult than that of the judge.

This will seem strange to the lawyer, who will immediately say that he has the decisions of the courts. So he has, but they do him little good. They give him the limitation but often no positive guidance. Let the man who wishes a perfect state law regulating the issue of stocks and bonds of corporations try to draft such a law if he wishes to learn what positive principles, legal or economic, he can sift out from the mass of legal decisions which must be consulted.

Let the legislator try to make a law regulating rebates and he will find at once that the ‘kinds of economic rebates may be many times greater than will fit any definition of the courts. It is necessary to have this