American Editorial Comment upon the Corpus Juris Project Dean School,
Kirchwey of Dr.
James
the
Dewitt
Columbia Andrews
Law and
Lucien Hugh Alexander are the men who have conceived the plan. Their remarks about the state of our law and the quotations they give on that subject from distinguished lawyers and jurists will astound the lay man. . . . William B. Hornblower says the condition of the law is "appalling." Justice Day says: "It is often impossible for counsel to give competent legal advice." A New York banker is quoted as saying that "the greatest risk of business is the legal risk." One of the advocates of the plan writes that "Bench and bar are alike floundering in the mazes of unorganized, unsystematized and
often conflicting rules and decisions." The late James C. Carter said that a work such as is proposed "would be the one indispensable tool of every lawyer's art," and predicted fortune and fame unlimited for its creator. It is undoubtedly true that a codification of American law such as is suggested, com bined with a simplification of court procedure such as President Taft so steadily urges, would make the rendering of justice incom parably more exact, and by that very token would add immensely to the national wealth.
and for the indefinite continuation of these anarchic conditions it would be difficult to find an apology. As Judge Dillon declared, "while the number of cases is legion, the principles they establish are comparatively few, capable of being thoroughly mastered and also of direct and intelligent statement." That this is not an unduly optimistic view can be shown by actual facts. In the Louisi ana Code the whole law on the subject of principal and agent is stated in seventy short paragraphs; and it is diflicult to think of any question arising out of that relation which does not find its solution in one of those articles. It is gratifying to learn that the impulse toward a clarification of the legal chaos and a systematic reconstruction of our corpus juris has proceeded from a member of the Philadelphia bar. . . . It has the indorse ment of the bench and of the leaders of the bar, but the high standing of the proponents in their profession would commend the plan even if it had no other sponsorship than theirs. . . . A work of this character would certainly be a boon. There is one pre-condition of its success, however, it must be above the
suspicion of commercialism. Philadelphia Record: AN AMERICAN CORPUS JURIS There is a fundamental truth behind the legal maxim that "everybody is presumed to know the law."
463
To this end a
foundation will be necessary. The estimated requirement is one million dollars. Here is an opportunity for philanthropy that would do everlasting honor to the giver. Who will be America's Justinian?
The time has come, how
Bench and Bar (New York) :— ever, when even the expert jurists find them selves hopelessly tangled in a maze of judicial and statutory verbiage. . . . It is not on the lawyers, however, that the burden weighs heaviest. One of the best known financiers of the world recently ob served that “the greatest risk in business is
the legal risk."
But on the common people
the uncertainty of the law bears down with crushing force. The great corporations can discount the legal risk and write off an ascer tainable percentage of their profits as insurance against mischancev The average man has no ready means toishift and distribute the losses sufiered from the law's defects;
he
must bear them and grin, though it is no laughing matter. In respect to reducing the mass of statutory and judge-made law to
rational and systematic corpus juris the English-speaking nations are a century or more behind the rest of the civilized world;
THE AMERICAN CORPUS jURIS The Green Bag for February contains something of special interest in an article by Mr. Lucien Hugh Alexander, of the Phila delphia bar, setting forth the project of him self, Dean Kirchwey, of Columbia, and Dr. James Dewitt Andrews for the compilation of "a complete and comprehensive statement in adequate perspective of the entire body of American law,"——a statement, to quote the language of the late James C. Carter, "of
the whole body of the law in scientific language and in a concise and systematic form, at once full, precise and correct." What a project! How it dazzles the eye, and stimu lates the imagination! It is little wonder that many of the best legal minds in the country have paused for a moment in the midst of their labors, judicial or forensic,
to wish it godspeed, at the very least.
