the filling of the gaps which are found in every positive law in greater or less measure." You may call this process legislation, if you will. In any event, no system of jus scriptum has been able to escape the need of it. Today a great school of continental jurists is pleading for a still wider freedom of adaptation and construction. The statute, they say, is often fragmentary and ill-considered and unjust. The judge as the interpreter for the community of its sense of law and order must supply omissions, correct uncertainties, and harmonize results with justice through a method of free decision--"libre recherche scientifique." That is the view of Gény and Ehrlich and Gmelin and others. [1] Courts are to "search for light among the social elements of every kind that are the living force behind the facts they deal with." [2]
The power thus put in their hands is great, and subject, like all power, to abuse; but we are not to flinch from granting it. In the longer run "there is no guaranty of
