The “American Corpus Juris" Griticised well described by Professor Wigmore as "thLs tangled mass of irreconcilable contrarieties." until that period "yet far 05" (again to quote Professor Wigmore) when we shall have dis entangled our present juridiml knots and have developed from generations yet unborn those mighty intellectual giants of the law capable of stating an ideal Corpus jurr's. But other problems are entering the equation. Our old world does not stand still, and it is a
practical world. It is ever moving, and each generation breeds its new social problems and its new juristic difiiculties, and with these each generation should to the best of its ability grapple. Otherwise, and if there is force in Professor Wigmore's argument, why not stop the administration of justice until per fect judges are evolved? By the time our present juristic knots are untied-—and Wigmore says it will take a gen eration,and we will be fortunate if the prophecy is fu1fi11ed—new issues, new complications, new difficulties will beset the seeker after the eternal principles of justice, and the men of that period will no doubt be able to argue with equal and perhaps greater force that the problem of a Corpus jun's had better not be attempted until the complicated questions of that age are settled at some time in the still more hazy future, and so on and on from generation to generation ad infim'lum—and "after that the deluge." This gospel of despair, had it held sway in 1787, would have blocked the formulation of the Constitution of the United States. It would have been so much easier to have drafted it had it been delayed until those halcyon days when the
people of the United States shall have dis entangled themselves from their governmental difficulties, and solved by "assimilation in social conditions" (to quote Professor Wig more) the problem of a virile national govern ment. But “the fathers" had faith in their ability to solve for their own time their own problems, and some of them bad faith they
could solve some of them for future ages and other peoples—and they did. We of our generation in America are not disposing of our problems in the law as rapidly as the new ones are developing. The situation is constantly growing more compli cated. This is not a. credit to our profession and it is a disgrace to our civilization. It will not do to shove our tasks forward upon
the next generation and offer as an excuse that our men are unequal to the problems of
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our day. We must grapple with them and solve them as best we may. Our issues are the present ones. The idealistic statement of our Corpus jun‘: may be left to be worked out in the future through the genius of unborn generations. We need now the best state ment of the principles of our law which the men of our time are equal to preparing. It is all we deserve and it is all that we can get; but let us arouse ourselves and get it. Future generations will improve it according to their ability and their needs. Human law is the creature of man. Man was not made for the law, but the law for man. If man were made for the purpose of working out eventually an ideal statement of the law, instead of law being made to aid man in his present needs and to a higher status. then we could afl'ord to wait, as Professor Wigmore would have us do, until in the process of our evolution more analytiail brain powerhad been developed by our race. But law is not the de si'deratum. it is amere meanstoanend. It is only man's servant ——his tool for present work. There are other reasons, apart from the aiding of ourselves, why we as a profession (each member of it in his own way doing what
he can) should now prepare a scientific and adequately co-ordinated statement of the entire body of Amerirnn law. We have re sponsibilities as a nation to the world at large. America and the men of our day are not play ing the part in the world-problems of the law they should. Have we helped China as we should in her struggle for the best system of law which her people can evolve from the experience of the Orient and the Occident? The answer must be “Nol"— See views of Dr. Wu Ting-fang, Green Bag for February, 1910, p. 97. Is American law exer cising the influence it should on the continent of Europe? Again, emphatically “No!"— Read statements of Judge von Lewinski of Berlin and M. Barbey of Paris, Id. p. 96-97. To the foreign jurist our American law is a closed book by reason of there being no state ment of our Corpus juris. The lawyers of continental Europe have been equal to the task of doing for the Civil Law of Rome what we should be equal to doing for the Common Law inherited from our Anglo Saxon progenitors. The lawyers of Ham murabi's time did not flinch when con fronted by their problems, nor did those of the days of Theodosius II, Justinian and Napoleon. Should we? The views received
