The Evolution of an Effective Law rules designed to meet the public demand for the elimination of the evil. If the condition which the law is designed to remedy be simple and the forces in volved well understood, it is possible that this first attempt at regulation may prove effective; but in a develop ing society the conditions are so infinitely complex and the intricately correlated forces involved, as well as the limits of the efficiency of legislation, are so little understood that it is extremely im probable that this first effort will meet the requirement of the situation. This tentative enactment will sooner or later be put to the test of administrative en forcement and its inefficiency will become apparent; then will follow amendment or modified enactment in an effort to remedy the deficiencies of the former law. This modified law is again subjected to the test of actual enforcement and is again amended to remedy new deficiencies. In this manner the process of progressive experimentation and analy sis continues until a law has been devised which is adapted to the existing social conditions, which is in harmony with the unconscious social forces involved and which will furnish an efficient remedy for the condition complained of, provided, of course, that such legisla tive regulation is a possibility. These processes of growth vary infinitely in their details and may extend over con siderable periods of time, but they involve the same set of principles of development and manifest the same general outline. The process of pro gressive experimentation applies to the construction of the constitution of a state as well as to the development of an efficient statute of a legislative assembly. The process may require many centuries of time and may include experiments in many nations. A treaty between two sovereign states and a
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regulation of an administrative bureau are produced by the same process. This process of progressive experi mentation is well illustrated in the history of federal regulation of inter state railroad transportation. Here we see the social demand for the regula tion of a set of phenomena entirely new in the history of society, the tentative enactments of Congress which were entirely ignored by the railroads, the successive experimentation and pro gressive amendment which finally cul minated in the organization of the Com merce Court and the development of a system of regulation which is beneficent in its operation both as to society in general and the railroads themselves. The history of this legislation in detail is too well known to bear repetition here. Today we can see the same process in its initial stages in the efforts of the federal Government to regulate trusts. A further examination of these pro cesses brings to light some of the salient characteristics of the evolution of law. These are of special interest because of their direct bearing upon the many legislative reforms now being agitated. In the first place, it is evident that the development of law is always some distance behind the advance movements of society in general. The evolution of the social consciousness which recog nizes the need of remedial legislation necessarily precedes the first conscious steps towards regulation. The process itself, after it has been put in operation, requires a considerable period of time. In a developing society conditions are constantly arising which never have been the subject of legislative regula tion in the past history of civilization; legal history, therefore, furnishes no precedent and the process begins de novo.
