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PROFESSOR WIGMORE AND THE "AMERICAN CORPUS jURIS"
able rule where the settled rule is not
to be found will call for an order of constructive legal ability which is ex
EAN WIGMORE of the North western University School of Law,
in a communication which elsewhere appears in this issue, records his em
phatic dissent from the plan proposing an “American Corpus juris.” The judgment of one of America's ablest legal scholars possesses very great weight
and his opinions are deserving of the most
thoughtful
consideration.
His
criticisms must be treated in the same candid, dispassionate spirit in which they are offered. His first objection is that the proposal is untimely, because the law is under going continuous change, and a genera tion must elapse before it can become a body of fixed and coherent principles. Of course if the proposed statement
of the law were to be confined purely to an exposition of principles established in all jurisdictions, so small a portion of the field of American jurisprudence
would be covered that such a work would have no utility. The most diffi cult problem to be solved in the execu tion of this enterprise, a problem far greater than that of establishing the foundation on a satisfactory basis and organizing the talent necessary to the
success of the undertaking, must of necessity be that of determining what policy shall be pursued in the treatment of unsettled and conflicting legal doc trines. The task of stating the reason
ceedingly rare. Wigmore’s
We do not share Dean
impression,
however,
that
if such ability can be set to the task, the unsettled law cannot be so logically and far-sightedly dealt with as to insure permanent utility for the undertaking. Undoubtedly most of the changes are only on the surface. The underlying fundamental doctrines do not change. Even when we take into account the relatively slow changes in the law induced by altered social and economic conditions, there must be a basic system of rules out of which is evolved the reason of the law, which in a single generation can undergo only incon sequential variations. No doubt it will be far easier to state the law as an orderly system twenty-five or fifty years hence than it is now. That the time is unripe, however, for an efiort to bring
order out of chaos and to forestall changes which are merely the fortuitous outgrowth of the blundering quest of the right rule, is hard to believe.
We
agree with Judge Grosscup that "We have come to a time when, for the
sake of civilization as well as the practical administration of the law, the body of the law should be put into scientific form." (See 22 Green Bag 103.)
Dean Wigmore’s second objection is that the plan is unsound because of the countless differences in the law as laid down in fifty distinct jurisdictions.
