The Green Bag Volume XXII
February, 1910
Number 2
Memorandum in re Corpus fan's‘ By Locrsu Huorr ALEXANDER OF THE PHILADELPHIA BAR
"Law is the business to which my life is devoted, and 1 should show less than devotion if I did not do what in me lies to improve it. and, when I perceive what seems to me the ideal of its future, if I hesitated to point it out and to press toward it with all my heart." —Hor.uss.
‘Mr. Alexander at the outset desires to direct attention to the fact that “ the plan ” out lined in this Memorandum (as stated at p. 70 infra), is not his own individually, but is the joint product of Professor George W. Kirchwey, Dr. James Dewitt Andrews and himself.]
HIS memorandum relates to the great project urged upon the atten
tion of the profession from time to time by many of our leading and most prac tical jurists,——a complete and compre hensive statement in adequate perspec
tive of the entire body of American law,
the body of the law so as to enable a view to be had of the whole and of the relation of the several parts and tend to establish and_make familiar a uniform nomenclature. Such a work, well executed, would be the node mecum
of every lawyer and every judge. It would be the one indispensable tool of his art. Fortune and fame sufi‘icient to satisfy any measure of avarice or ambition would be the due reward of the man, or men, who should succeed in
our Corpus juris. Upon this subject the late James C. Carter, inter alia, said :
conferring such a boon.
"A statement of thewhole bodyof the law in scientific language and in a concise and sys tematic form, at once full, precise and correct, would be of priceless value. It would exhibit
be suitable to be enacted into law for even it would wholly fail were its rules made rigidly operative upon future cases;—it could proudly dispense with any legislative sanction."
‘This Memorandum was in the first instance pre pared for the consideration of one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. It has since been elaborated and submitted to many of the ableat leaders of the profession for expressions of their 0 'nion upon the importance and practica bility of t e project. See p. 91, n seq., infra. Most of the italics in the liuotations represent the underscorin in the origins manuscript of the author of the ernorandurn.
It would not, indeed,
This subject will be presented under two heads :I. The imperative demand through more than s century of our history for an adequate statement of our Corpus Iurfs. II. A method for the practical achieve ment of the desired result.
