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The Green Bag II BY WHAT METHOD SHALL THE DESIRED RESULT BE PRACTICALLY ACHIEVED?
HIS involves consideration of two main points: (a) The plan for the actual creation
of the work. (b) The financing of the project. First (a).
The Building of the Work.
The following conclusions, and the
plan of operations in which those con clusions have taken form, are the result of long study and deliberation and many
conferences between two men of wide experience and high standing in the profession and myself, and of numerous consultations, personally and by cor respondence, with some of the ablest
Furthermore, he declared :— "The reports of a given jurisdiction in the course of a generation take up pretty much the whole body of the law and restate it from its present point of view. We could reconstruct the Corpus juris from them if all that went before were burned. The use of the earlier reports is mainly historical."
So also Judge Dillon has said :— "The number of cases is legion, but the principles they establish are comparatively few, capable of being thoroughly mastered and cap able also of direct and intelligent statement"
The two to whom
Then there are those who jump to the conclusion that by reason of the vast amount of statute law, the preparation
I refer are James DeWitt ~Andrews, formerly of the Chicago, now of the
virtually an impossibility, no matter
jurists in America.
New York Bar, and long the Chairman
of the American Bar Association's Com mittee on Classification of the Law,‘ and Dean
George
W.
Kirchwey,
of the
of the text will be most difficult and how thoroughly the system of organi zation. This view is also based on a superficial and inadequate comprehen sion of our law as a whole. No man of
Andrews
our time probably had a better grasp
will be recognized as the learned author
of the entire field of law than the late James C. Carter, and he asserted:
Columbia Law School.
Dr.
of Andrews’ American Law’( and the editor of Wilson's Works and of other publications, and Dean Kirchwey as a legal scholar and teacher of wide reputation.
In the first place, we believe it is only a superficial view which assumes that the
"It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that nearly the whole of that body of law which really prescribes rules of civil conduct, which is stamped with the moral quality of Justice, and which governs the private transactions of men with each other, is substantially un
touched by the statute book."
work is so vast that from the practical
standpoint it is impossible of achieve ment.
In this connection, it is well to
recall the words of Mr. justice Holmes:
Second. Confident that the desired result may be attained within a reason able time, we are positive that for various reasons, it cannot be achieved
"The number of our precedents when gen eralized and reduced to a system, is not unman ageably large. They present themselves as a finite body of dogma, which may be mastered within a reasonable time." ‘See 1902 report, xxv A. B. A. Re rtsI 425-475. TSee review of Second edition in run Bag, vol. xxi. pp. 104-110.
in a satisfactory manner by one person, and that its successful accomplishment requires the thorough organization of
that portion of the brain-power of the country fitted to engage in such an undertaking.
