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[judge I. H. Reed-Continued.) trader, even the proverbial widow and or phan are vitally interested in knowing to a practical‘certainty their respective rights and duties. I sincerely hope means will be found to enable you and your proposed colleagues to carry out your plans in the dignified and com prehensive manner suggested in your memo randum. Everett P. Wheeler, Esq., of the New York
Bar, Chairman of the American Bar Asso ciation's Committee on Remedies to Prevent Delay and Unnecessary Cast in Litigation:— Your plan for a complete and comprehen sive statement of the entire body of Ameri can Law interests me greatly. It is hard for anyone who is not a, practising lawyer to realize the great difliculty that is imposed upon lawyers in advising, and upon judges in deciding, by the enormous mass of legal decisions which now form the evidence of American law. Such a work as you propose, if well executed, would be of the greatest im portance to the community. Lord Bacon well said, that a country in which the laws are indefinite and uncertain is subject to an iron servitude. Yet such is the condition, to a considerable degree at least, of the United States. lllany of the evils that public men and philanthropists bewail are due to this cause. Burke expressed his idea of what the legal status should be when he said that no man who was worthy to have the legal gown upon his shoulders would dare assert that it was impossible to know the law of England in any particular case until it should be decided by the Courts in that case. Unfortunately, every intelligent lawyer must now admit that the condition Burke declared to be impossible is now frequently realized in America. Hon. Charles F. Manderson, former Presi dent of the American Bar Association, and for many years United States Senator from Nebraska, twice President pro tem. of the United States Senate:—— Your proposition is to bring order out of chaos, for I cannot imagine anything more chaotic than the present condition of the law in this country. With the conflict and variance in the laws of different states and the constant disturbances
that arise because of this variance there seems to be an absolute necessity for some uniformity of legislation upon all subjects that afiect the commercial welfare and do mestic happiness of the people of the United States. Our empires within an empire make frequently disastrous and ruinous conflict, and there is no remedy for evils that increase as time goes on except an education not only of the legal profession, but of the masses, to the necessity of greater uniformity in legislation. The American Bar Association has had this in view for years, but, unfortu
nately, has been able to accomplish very little to bring about the much needed result. Your project is worthy of all credit and aid, and I greatly hope that before much time elapse: your efiort will be crowned with full success. Anything that I can do at any time to forward this excellent work I will gladly do. My own opinion has been so fully covered by those with whom you have had corre spondence that I feel that nothing is needed from me except to endorse what has been so well put by my friend Everett P. Wheeler, Esq., when he quotes from Lord Bacon in saying: “That a country in which the laws are indefinite and uncertain is subject to an iron servitude." We can be rid of some of this servitude by uniformity of state legisla tion, and a definite and well settled doctrine
firmly established showing the distinction between legislation that should be extended to the states and that that should come from the Congress of the United States. Hon. Jacob
M. Dickinson of
Tennessee,
Secretary of War and President of the American
Bar Association, 1907—08:-— There can be no question as to the impor tance and desirability of such a work. Your plan as mapped out seems to me to be prac ticable and comprehensive. Hon. George W. Wickersham, Attorney General of the United States: I have carefully read the Memorandum. There is no doubt that “a complete, correct statement of ‘the whole body’ of our law in scientific language" is a high professional ideal, and that, as Mr. Carter said in the paper from which you quote: "A statement of the whole body of the law in scientific language and in a concise and systematic form, at once full, precise and correst. would be of priceless value." . . . The value of such work, if prop erly carried out, is beyond question; the dith
