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The Green Bag
To accomplish this great work of codify'ing the laws of the United States requires a great deal of money. It is a work that will bring everlasting fame to the man who finances it. . . . Here is an opportunity for John D. Rockefeller. It lacks the feature of charity so dear to the heart of the philanthropist— but it would be a real service to the country.
lished the law on any particular point may readily be ascertained." There is to be a board of editors, not exceeding seven in number, which will be supreme in every editorial matter. . . . The project also contemplates the co-operation of an advisory council "of twenty or twenty-five of the strongest men in the profession, both on the bench and at the bar, who would not have
New York Sun: AN AMERICAN CORPUS JURIS In the Green Bag law magazine for Feb ruary Mr. Lucien Hugh Alexander of the Philadelphia bar propounds a scheme of considerable public importance and of much interest to the legal profession: for the pre paration and publication of an Amerimn
Corpus Inn's.
By this he means a complete
and comprehensive statement in a philo sophical and systematic form of the entire body of American law. The term is borrowed
from the Corpus jun's Civilis of the Roman Emperor Justinian, the second part of which, known as the Pandects, was an abridged digest of the principles and rules of the Roman law. . . . In planning a similar conspectus of Ameri can law Mr. Alexander has been acting in co operation with Mr. James DeWitt Andrews, formerly of Chicago but now of the New York bar, and Professor George W. Kirchwey, dean
of the law school of Columbia University. Their project has certainly been most highly commended by distinguished Judges and lead ers of the bar in all parts of the country. . . .
the time to devote to the actual work of authorship or editorship," but who would give advice on any point as to which they might be consulted by the editors. Still further provision is made in the scheme for a board of criticism of one hundred or two hundred of the ablest lawyers in the land, to whom particular parts of the work should be submitted for revision as they were pre pared for publication. . . . The complete and systematic statement of the law of the land thus planned would require about twenty volumes of 1,000 pages each. Assuming that the requisite talent can be assembled to produce it, how is the east of preparation and publication to be met? . . . Mr. Alexander evidently has in mind a benevolent trust to do for the law what the Carnegie Institution in Washington is doing for‘ science. . . . [and] deserves high praise for his enthusiastic advocacy of an admirable project, and we hope that some patriotic American may be found with the wealth and disposition to defray the cost of such an under taking. Chicago Record-Herald:—
As to the desirability of such a work there JUSTINIAN, NAPOLEON-WHO NEXT? can be no difference of opinion. . . . To take the vast mass of case law as ex hibited in thousands of volumes of reported American decisions and formulate therefrom a compact, clear, accurate and systematic
statement of the principles and rules which constitute the common law in the United States is a work which demands a very high order of legal and literary ability. Mr. Alexander, we believe, is well fitted to under
take it and is inspired by an enthusiasm which is essential to the success of such an enterprise. Professor Kirchwey also possesses the requisite learning and experience in the elucidation of the law. . . . The plan in outline is "to block out with the ablest expert advice obtainable, the entire field of the law under a logical system of classification so that when the work is pub
At the beginning of the consecutive history of most peoples stands a lawgiver——a system atizer of the old tangled rules of the popular law. Moses, Solon, Manu are but typical names. . Ever and again as great civilizations de velop a time comes when the complexities and perplexities of the law have become so great that at last some leader undertakes the task of simplification and codification. Jus tinian's fame rests on his code. Bonaparte may well be remembered for his code after his other claims to fame have become much dimmer. Some of the best American lawyers think the time has come for an American corpus fun's to be created on a level with these others. . . .
