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THF GREEN BAG
a period of transition. But a large part must be attributed to a wide-spread dis respect for law, to a general sentiment that unless the individual does so assert himself, he or those in whom he feels an interest will not be dealt with as justice requires. " Neminent opportet esse sapicntiorcm legibus," says Coke, "no one out of his own private judgment ought to be wiser than the law."1 When everyone out of his private judgment is wiser than the law, there is a condition in which the law is of no effect. The fault, when such a condition exists, may rest with the people or with the law. For my part, I believe that current disrespect for law is not, in intention at least, disrespect for justice, and that the fault must be laid largely to the law and to the manner in which law is taught and expounded. Political and juridical development were necessary before industrial and social devel opment.' Government and law created the environment of peace and order and stabil ity in which alone the industrial and social organization of to-day could grow. Hence legal theory and doctrine reached a degree of fixity before the conditions with which law must deal to-day had come into existence. And at this point where legal principles were taking a final shape the growing point in human progress began to shift to the natu ral and physical sciences and their applica tions in engineering, in the arts, and in scientific cultivation of the soil and develop ment of its resources. Titius and Seius, who in their day had driven philosophy from the schools, are not unlikely to be driven out in turn. The changed order of things has been felt in legal science. Research of almost every other sort has been endowed. Laboratories are set up to investigate every other human interest. A flood of bulletins goes forth annually to spread far and wide the latest results in the application of natural and physical science to health and wealth, in the application of economic 1 Co. Lit. 976.
theory to our material well-being, in the application of sociological principles to problems of state and municipal life. In all these things the public shows an endur ing interest. It ought to be someone's duty to advise the people of the progress of juridical science and to make its results public property. It ought to be someone's duty to gather and preserve statistics of the administration of justice and to apply thereto or deduce therefrom the proper principles of judicial administration. Law teachers ought to be making clear to the public what law is and why law is and what law does and why it does so. But no one can obtain statistics at all complete nor at all authoritative upon the most everyday points in judicial administration. No one is studying seriously or scientifically how to make our huge output of legislation effective. There are no endowments for juridical research. There are no labora tories dedicated to legal science whose bulletins shall make it possible for the scholar to obtain authoritative data and for the lay public to reach sound conclu sions. No one thinks of establishing them. In state universities where one may be trained gratuitously in the most specialized applications of science, where an engineer may obtain his technical training without expense, students of law are charged a heavy tuition. The obvious reason is that the people do not feel that jurisprudence is doing anything for them. Legal science must first exhibit some practical results. It must show that it has something to offer before it may hope for public recognition. But it should not be suffered to remain stricken with sterility in face of the fruitful tasks that await it in this era of transition. Legal science seems to begin everywhere in the attempt to distinguish cases super ficially analogous and to establish "differ ences" or "diversities."1 From this com parison of rules within the legal system, 1 Ihering, Geist des Romischen Rechts, III, 1, 11. In the period just before Coke the reports
