26 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, doubt these advantages are entitled to consideration ; but there is the obvious disadvantage that maxims " put in Latin " will be more liable to be misunderstood by the average lawyer than by a man of Bacon's scholarship. And although the maxims have now been translated by modern editors, yet they are still generally cited in their Latin garb. It is time to bring this discussion to an end. What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? Shall we say that Mr. Broom's book should be burned by the common hangman ; and that the citation of maxims in courts of justice should be forbidden by a legislative enactment framed upon the model of the statute passed in the early days of Kentucky, prohibiting the citation of English decisions.^ Far from it. On the contrary, Mr. Broom's excellent work should be in the library of every practitioner; and all lawyers should familiarize themselves with the leading maxims, which have the great merit of being " easily learned and not easily forgotten." But it should always be remembered that these fa- miliar phrases are not all of equal value ; that some ought to be amended, and others discarded altogether. Above all, it should be remembered that these maxims (even the best of them) are only maxims ; that they are " not meant to take the place of a digest ; " ^ that they are neither definitions nor treatises; ^ that while they are " a convenient currency," yet '* they require the test from time to time of a careful analysis ; " * and that, in many instances, they are merely guide-posts pointing to the right road, but not the road itself. Jeremiah Smith, 1 Schurz's Life of Henry Clay, 49-50 ; Dembitz, Kentucky Jurisprudence, 7, 8. 2 5 Law Quarterly Review, 444. 8 See 13 Criminal Law Magazine, 832.
- 5 Law Quarterly Review, 444.
