The Doctrine of Stare Decisis. It was a characteristic of Jewish tradition that it was handed down with minute fidelity from mouth to mouth. The law was stated in the very words in which it was heard by the reporter, and no stronger argument could be used in any case than the citation of an ancient precedent. And it appears that even where a written record was made, the tradition by word of mouth was kept up. After the fight with Amalek at Rephidim,
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in which the Amalekites were utterly routed we are told in the Book of Exodus (xvii,i4) : And the Lord said unto Moses, " Write this as a memorial in a book and rehearse it (lit. " lay it") in the ears of Joshua. " One would suppose that the written record would be sufficiently trustworthy, yet here it seems the oral tradition was used as an equally sure method of preserving the record of that famous fight.
OF STARE DECISIS.
By Boyd Winchester. PROFESSOR C. G. TIEDEMAN, in an article on " The Income Tax Deci sions " (Annals of the American Academy, September, 1895), says: "The rule of stare decisis has its limitations; and when ever the decision of a court in the interpre tation of a rule of law is so far out of line with the prevalent conception of right and justice that public opinion, as it finds expression and feeling through the court, and those who legitimately influence the formation of judicial opinion, would indorse and urge the repudiation of the old ruling and the adoption of a new ruling which is more consonant with the prevalent sense of right, we learn that the court has overruled the decision in the earlier case." We find here an idea of much greater and wider significance than is conveyed by its application merely to the development and administration of the law. Authority is a moral power which exerts peculiar influence on the minds of men in every department of life. It often leads them to adopt opin ions contrary to their own convictions, and to commit acts at which their consciences, if left to themselves, would strongly re
volt. Achievements veiled in a mist of the past seem marvelous, as distant objects when beheld through any dense medium will generally assume an extravagant and unnatural magnitude, and there are many who resemble the minister of whom Sydney Smith declared, " The wisdom of my Lord Hawkesbury is of that complexion which always shrinks from the present exer cise of it by praising the splendid examples of it in ages past." Few individuals have indeed the hardihood to oppose a " princi ple embalmed in a precedent, " or opinions propagated by men whom they have been accustomed to regard as their superiors in moral and intellectual excellence. From this frailty of our nature, many errors are disseminated among mankind, and much injury is done to society, by men, too, who in an honest conviction of their intentions are often led astray. It is not necessary, in the satiric line of Pope, " to think our fathers fools, so wise we grow," but the mind delivered from the trammels of authority should assert its na tive freedom of thought and press onward according to its own bent in the investiga
