American System of Supreme Courts. THE
AMERICAN SYSTEM
IN the course of an interesting article in the International Review Mr. justice S. E. Baldwin, of Connecticut, writes as fol lows: The American system of Supreme Courts investing one tribunal with the right to reverse the judgments of all others has also given to every man a reasonable and increas ing certainty in respect to his rights and obligations, under any and all circumstances. This is due to our Law Reports. For more than a hundred years, the judicial opinions of our highest appellate tribunals have been reduced to writing by the judges themselves, and published for common in formation. During most of this period the publication has been made officially, and at public expense. No other people has ever done this. It has given us a mass of legal precedent, and it belongs to our system of jurisprudence that— "Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent." It is not merely political freedom that thus grows. It is freedom also from unjust inter ference with personal rights, in the ordinary relations of private life, between man and man. These Law Reports are interwoven with American history. They constitute no small part of it. Such opinions as those of Chief Justice Marshall as to the right of Congress to charter banks, or to make commerce between two States free from the control of either of them; of Chief Justice Taney, before the Civil War, in the "Dred Scott Case"; of Chief Justice Chase, after the Civil War, that the United States is an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States; and of the various Justices in the recent "Insular Cases," are great historical events. They are true State papers. But the reported decisions of our State courts are still more important as a record
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of the history of American society. The political relations of men are far less com plex and far less important than their pri vate relations. The object of creating or suffering political relations is to secure proper private relations. The mutual rights and obligations which, from time to time, govern the daily life of men in civilized society must depend largely on the applica tion of sound reason to changing circum stances. This is the work of the courts, and the Law Reports explain it for the public benefit. A complete code of civil rights would be better, if it were a possibility. But the fullest code calls for interpretation, and demands it more and more as the years roll on and con ditions change. What code of fifty years ago, for instance, could provide for the use of the telephone in the negotiation of con tracts, or as an instrument of evidence in court? When the Roman law was codified under Justinian, every attempt was made to keep it as the only source of authority. Lawyers were forbidden to cite the original works from which it was compiled. Commentaries were absolutely prohibited. All was, of course, in vain. It was a collection of signs, that is, of words used to express thoughts and precepts. What thoughts and what precepts? This inevitably, in many cases, would be a matter of controversy. The magistrate must settle the dispute, and to do this justly he must have all the light to be got from argument and treatise. Precisely because of this impossibility of making word signs convey exactly the same meaning to all men under all circumstances, the power of our Supreme Courts to declare the law, when used in the interpretation of statutory and constitutional provisions, has been not infrequently pushed beyond due bounds. The executive and the legislative officers
