The Arrangement of the Law Appeal. Sir Peter has become Lord O’Brien of Kilfenora, while Christopher Palles has received no further honor from the Crown, save that he has been
sworn in a member of the Privy Council both of England and Ireland (a coveted distinction). We have called him a
499
great man, and would apply to him the words spoken of another great English lawyer, who never reached the bench: "If a lawyer can be a great man, Chris
topher Palles is a great man; for we do not know anything that a lawyer can do
which he cannot do.”
The Arrangement of the Law By HENRY T. TERRY FORMERLY or THE NEW Your; BAR, AND NOW PROFESSOR or Excuse LAW in ma Umvensrrv or Toxvo, JAPAN [Professor Terry outlinedp‘in has pre redthethis paper as for‘ his February initial contribution to the juris project Green Bag , 1910, v. 22, pp. Corpus 59-118, in which quotations from Professor Terry appear at pp. 64 and 97, 98. present articletosets forth Professor '5 sponsors system of and should Thenot be assumed represent the viewsTe ofnthe of classification the Corpus {art's undertaking, as they have not expressed their opinion upon it. Professor erry was the first to urge u n the attention of the American Bar Association the importance of a scienti c classification of the law, and as a result of his efl'or'ts in 1888 a committee on that subject was appointed, of which Dr. James DeWitt Andrews subsequently became the chairman. We shall print in our next issue a paper by Dr. Andrews, expressive of his views upon the classification of the law.—— Editor]
F there is any such thing as a natural
and to things, and their conditions, must
arrangement of the law, i.e., an
be protected. Those conditions and relations are states of fact. The ulti mate objects with which law concerns itself are therefore two: power to act, and the protection of certain states of
arrangement which would naturally reveal itself as the result of an adequate analysis of legal conceptions, such an arrangement is the one that would be
most likely to be generally accepted, practically useful and permanent. The first step toward an arrangement, there fore, is to determine what are the funda
mental conceptions on which the law
is based and which must furnish the main frame of its arrangement, and to
ascertain by analysis their exact con tents.
The object of law is to protect human living. To live his life well, a man must
have a certain power to act. Also his own physical and mental condition and his relations to certain other persons
fact. These two things, acts and states of fact, stand in the last analysis as the contents of those legal entities or con ceptions which we call rights. "Rights"
is simply a generic name for those‘ things which the law attempts to secure to men. There must be, therefore, at least two kinds of right,-—one kind hav
ing acts for its content, and the other having states of fact. It is true that the two are connected, and the former depends upon the latter. If the con
dition of my body, which is a state of fact, is impaired, e.g.,if I am sick or
