The Next Great Step in jurisprudence professional advocate to experience. An Eng lish or an American lawyer who had made such a speech to a jury as the prosecutor describes would hardly sufier doubts that he had discussed before to check him then. As usual in stories written to point a moral, the character intended by the author to enforce the lesson is the least natural. But in this instance it furnishes a fine opportunity for an actor of delicate perception. The sporting judge is the most thoroughly developed character in the play. He is entirely natural in his artificial ways.
405
The brilliant and inspiring nature of the prisoner's wife lends deep pathos to her tragic struggle against the fate imposed upon her by the heartless routine of legal proceedings. The only person in the play who remains contented at the end is the old retired judge, whose success counts in being as just as the law allows and kinder. The piece is a fine illustration of the genius, character and aspiration of the French stage. It really holds the mirror up to nature.
Boston, Massachusetts.
The Next Great Step in Jurisprudence E have at present in American law no such unifying influence as that con tributed by Blackstone's Commentaries at an earlier period. and Mr. James DeWitt Andrews, writing in the Yale Law journal, vigorously urges the need of a logically co-ordinated system of law, uniform throughout the United States so far as conditions and needs are identical, such as Blackstone's Commentaries tended to promote. "With such a system," he adds, "conflict could not long exist, because two conflicting rules, even though legally operative in difier ent jurisdictions, would not long survive direct contrast in immediate juxtaposition." Some people think that the time is not ripe for such an undertaking, for “externally the laws of the various states seem to present a medley of contradictions, a chaotic assort ment of incongruous ideas, and all our com
prehensive books designed to cover the whole field are thrown together in utter disregard of all scientific principles of arrangement and expression." But Dr. Andrews declares con vincingly that while there is still some con troversy on minor points, “upon the whole. the fundamental questions of our law are so well settled and so generally understood as to be ready to yield to the sifting of science for the purpose of logical organization and
exposition. Mr. Waite states a. truth which any one who will take the pains to examine our whole body of law will corroborate: ‘There is a remarkably harmony in the general prin ciples of American law. There are discrepan cies and contradictions in some instances, but notwithstanding these, it may be regarded as settled that there is a great uniform, settled
system of American law.’
(Actions and De
fences, Preface)"
Dr. Andrews then defines the scientific spirit in jurisprudence, contrasting it with that spirit which inertly opposes all change. "warning those who would venture beyond known regions that further progress is im possible." "The function of practical juris prudence," he says, “is to sift out and make
available by visible expression in logical rela tion what is valuable in the accumulated mass of ancient principles, novel doctrines and modern rules, eliminating those which have become wholly obsolete and innocuous; in other words, to keep the actual law knowable and to guide and guard the expression of law in its formation." This spirit is opposed by inertia in intellectual matters. And the con flict is really one between the empiricists and the institutionists. “The empiricists insist that there is no system; that every phe nomenon is an isolated event, or, at best, that
