634 PRIVATE LAW 



The other part of the history of legislation will, to a great extent, 

 be always unknown. For the vast majority of the acts on the 

 statute-books of our states, the reasons or considerations inducing 

 their adoption have not been formulated. There has often been no 

 discussion in the legislature whatever, or if there has been, only 

 incomplete accounts of the debates have been preserved in the daily 

 press. It is otherwise with regard to the more important legislation 

 of Congress and, in a number of states, with regard to the enact- 

 ment of constitutions. In some branches of administrative legisla- 

 tion there are comments and recommendations of official authorities, 

 and revisers' notes furnish for a few states valuable material. The 

 whole amount of this source material is poor as compared w T ith what 

 the official publications of England, France, and Germany afford. 

 A great amount of information for legislative history is scattered 

 through the law reports, in cases construing statutes and pointing 

 out defects, which led to appropriate amendments. But the current 

 digests pay no particular attention to this feature of the law reports, 

 and the information is therefore not in a readily available form 

 and has not to any considerable extent been utilized. 



As for the history of operation of statutes, there has never been 

 any systematic observation of the working of the laws of persons, 

 property, or contracts. Excepting the subjects of bankruptcy, 

 divorce, and to some extent of personal injuries, there are no civil 

 judicial statistics, still less, of course, any information regarding the 

 legal relations that do not reach the courts. In codifying the Ger- 

 man civil code, use was made of data collected by the government 

 regarding the prevalence of certain forms of marital contracts and 

 testamentary dispositions; nothing of this kind would be available 

 in the United States. The Census Bureau in Washington would be 

 the only organization in this country to gather information of this 

 kind, and there is no present prospect of its undertaking so far- 

 reaching and difficult a work. Nor is there any near prospect that 

 our states will undertake the collection of judicial statistics. Gen- 

 eral impressions instead of exact and systematic observations will, 

 for a long time to come, be the basis upon which the policy of our 

 civil legislation will be built, and there is no promise of any radical 

 advance of jurisprudence in this respect. 



With regard to revenue and police legislation, however, the out- 

 look is much more hopeful. A considerable amount of information 

 is even now available in the official reports of the authorities charged 

 with the administration of the various acts, which naturally deal 

 to a considerable extent with the administrative and judicial aspects 

 of legislation. With the multiplication of controlling and regulating 

 boards, more and more light will be thrown upon the operation of 

 principles of constitutional and administrative law* 



