274
The Green Bag
Before such an Interstate Code Com mission can be organized Congress should begin to wipe out the confusion now existing in our federal statutes, little
less than a national disgrace, by the creation of a Federal Code Commission to be charged with the duty of making
a really scientific code of federal law, substantive and adjective. The pro posal recently made by the President for a commission to prepare a code of adjective law or procedure is too narrow; the work of such a commission should embrace also the substantive law which is in sore need of careful revision. The two entirely independent commissions should promote the common object by working side by side, at Washington, in comfortable quarters which Congress
should provide. In that way they would be able to devise harmonious regulations
as to subjects upon which both state and nation must legislate, defining more
clearly at the same time where state power should end and where federal power should begin. One-half of the con
fiicts that now arise are caused by the absence of such legislation. Above all two
such bodies working independently and yet in concert should be able to formu late a simple system of legal procedure, embracing the enforcement of both legal and equitable rights, for the common use of all tribunals, state and federal. That part of the work alone would save mil lions annually to the nation in the ex
penses and delays of litigation. Rich as we are. we cannot afford to prolong existing systems, reeking as they are
with unnecessary and oppressive expen Washington, D. C.
ditures, apart from the constant mis carriages of justice. No more inviting field for real fame ever opened before
a dominating personality equal to the opportunity. Certainly in President Taft we have a great jurist of wide experience who should find in the unification of American law a task more congenial than any in which he is now engaged. Tariffs come and tariffs go, but a great code goes on forever. The President
should supply the driving power to the existing machinery. On the one hand, he should exhort “The House of Gover
nors" to provide the means for the organization of the Interstate Code Com mission, while on the other he should
urge Congress to delay no longer the creation of a Federal Code Commission to work in harmony with it. Of both Commissions the President might well be the ex officio chairman. He should be
the harmonizing ligament between them. If it be urged that he has no time to give even to the initiation of such an
undertaking, it may be answered that he is not a more busy man than Napo leon, who presided in person over fifty seven of the one hundred and two
sessions which the Council of State devoted to a critical examination of each section of the draft of the Code Napo léon. From Thibaudeau, who was present, we learn that “he regulated and directed the discussion, guided and ani
mated the debate." Napoleon made no mistake when he prophesied that after all his battles are forgotten he will go down to a very late posterity "with his code in his hand."
