106
The Green Bag
Dean James P. Hall, of the Law School of the University of Chicago; formerly Professor of Law in the Law School of Leland Stanford University, California .'—-— As regards your general plan for a work upon American law in which the principal topics shall be thoroughly treated by men who
The necessity of a comprehensive and ac curate statement of the whole body of our American law is certainly a pressing one. The plan that you propose seems to me to be a feasible one and I trust that it may be carried out. Be assured that I shall esteem it a privilege to do what I can to aid in this are masters of their subjects, there can be no . great work. doubt that in most branches of the law such Hon. Henry H, Inger-a011, Dean Department a work, if well executed, would afford a far better discussion of principles than is now of Law, University of Tennessee, and formerly on the Bench of the Supreme Court of Ten to be found in any save a very few text-books. Nor can it be doubted that such a work would neesee:— I have often wondered, during my first gradually have a considerable influence in settling and unifying many legal rules that are twenty-five years at the bar and on the now in a deplorable state of uncertainty and bench, and during the past fifteen, while diversity. If the plan can be carried out studying, teaching and writing for text-books under capable direction and by competent and cyclopsedia, when and how it would come about that we Americans should have, out of hands it is well worth doing. . the vast mass of legal material, raw and di
a
' ' -' " 1*
gested, local and national, treatises and com~
Dean William R. Vance, of the Law School of George Washington University, Washington, D. C ., Professor-elect in the Yale Law School,
former Dean of the Law School of Washington and Lee University, Virginia:-— The magnitude as well as the beneficence of your plan quite sweep one off his feet, so that it is diflicult for him, in contemplating
the brilliancy of the scheme, both in concep tion and in detail, to keep fast hold of his judgment. Now that the north pole has been discovered and the air is being navigated, it
would seem foolish to say that even such a dream of poets-in-law as an American Corpus juris is unattainable. Therefore, we will admit that the plan you have worked out is not intrinsically impossible from the stand point of scholarship, although none of those who have dwelt upon the tremendous diffi culty of the undertaking have in any respect exaggerated the case. Iam, however, firmly of the opinion that it will become practicable only upon the basis of the philanthropic foundation which you urge so well. . . . I need not assure you that my statement
of the great obstacles to be overcomelin the prosecution of this most praiseworthy enter prise does not indicate any lack of enthusiasm on my part over the plan itself, or that my belief in the need of such a work is any less vivid than that of the many lawyers who have written you letters of encouragement. Professor H. B. Hutchins, Acting President University of lllichigan and Dean of its Law School; formerly Professor of Law at Cornell:—
mentan'es, decisions and dicta, an adequate production—“Pandects," if you please, set ting forth the Common Law of America, “Corpus juris Americani," and did not ex pect in my time any nearer approach to it. . . . I have today read your “Memoran dum in re Corpus juris," and on reviewing the progress of the past two decades towards uniformity through digesting, cyclopaedizing and the altruistic labors of our American Bar Association, I cannot see that any greater rapidity is required to consummate your opus maximum in the next two, and possibly in view of improved modes of locomotion it may be accomplished in one. . . . Your Memorandum gives me strong lean ing to your scheme and I hope for a modern Justinian, large enough to shoulder the work and give opportunity to laudable ambition. Hon. James G. Jenkins, United States Circuit judge for Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, resigned; and now Dean, College of
Law, Marquette University :— For many years I have been impressed with the need of a "Code Justinian" of Ameri can Law, that the law might be made certain and the whilrwind of opinions avoided. I have feared,however, that this was but an idle dream; not that the work was impossible, but because it was so great and possibly un remunerative from a commercial standpoint, that the necessary pecuniary aid could not be obtained. And yet the need for such a work is so urgent and of such consequence to the business interests
