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The Green Bag
not only incomplete, but lacked in logical arrangement. Andrews is the modern editor of Wilson's Works, and through
his study of Wilson, caught his spirit and the importance of such a great system
or “ Edifice of Law," based on an ade quate system of logical classification, as it has been so aptly termed by Judge Dillon (see infra). Yet Andrews’ Ameri can Law, which was the result, is of course too condensed to be even an
approximation of the complete work Wilson, Carter and others deemed so
important, and the production of which present day conditions make imperative.
In my judgment, Andrews’ real achieve ment is his practical application to our law as a whole of a logically co-ordinated system of classification. It is well at this point again to recall the words in our own time of that peerless leader of our race, the late James C. Carter:— "A statement of the whole body of the law in scientific language, and in a concise and systematic form, at once full, precise and cor rect, would be of priceless value. It would exhibit 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 estab lish and make familiar a uniform nomen clature. Such a work, well executed, would be the vade mecum of every lawyer and every judge. It would be the one indispensable tool of his art. Fortune and fame suflicient to satisfy any measure of avarice or ambition would be the due reward of the man, or men, who should succeed in conferring such a boon. It would not, indeed, be
suitable to be en
acted 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."
Other jurists have advocated this great cause, but I will refer but to a few.
In 1888, Henry T. Terry, then of the New York Bar, and now located in Japan, and a legal scholar and writer
of great ability, forcefully placed the problem before the American Bar Asso
ciation, and in clear and incisive style, summed up as follows:—— “The thing our law needs above all else is a complete scientific arrangement of the whole body of it. . . . There is no scientific and rational arrangement based on adequate analysis of legal conception, and a logical marshalling of the elements exhibited by the analysis. . . . The only way that our law can be kept man ageable and knowable is by its development along the lines of principle by having a logical framework upon which every special rule can be adjusted in its proper place. . . . The end and object of an arrangement is the eminently practical one of making the law easy to find, and it is barren pedantry to sacrifice this to any theoretical excellence of form, yet it is important to bear in mind that the practical end cannot be attained unless the arrangement adopted possesses in a high degree, those char acteristics which make it what, for want of
a better word, we may call philosophical. . . . If we are to have a place for everything and everything in its place the arrangemnt must be even severely and inexorably logical."
Still later, Judge Dillon in his “ Laws and Jurisprudence " (p. 346 et seq.) in
urging “tacit codification,” as Sir Henry Maine termed it, or “ expository codifi cation,” as Dean Wigmore has suggested, to distinguish it from legislative codi fication, declared :— "The materials for such a code already exist. A period of development is at some time reached in the legal history of every people when it is necessary to restate and reconstruct their laws. It seems to me that we have reached that period. Our materials for such restatement and reconstruction, which we may, if you please, call a code. are ample. They surpass in extent, in abundance. in variety, in richness, and above all in adap tation to our wants, any supply that can come from foreign sources. "What Sir Henry Maine calls ‘tacit codi fication’ is a process which is in constant operation, through the labors of Judges and text-writers. In this work elementary writers of learning and experience take an important part. In the scattered condition of our case law their works are indispensable. When judges and text-writers deduce from the
