SCIENCE AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 277 



been is more sacred than what might be. This is not unnatural, 

 because it is an important function of the law to administer 

 the kind of justice, which has been arrived at through the 

 experience of the past; and because the results of experimen- 

 tation are uncertain. To the conservative mind, there is a 

 majesty to tradition and precedent, because they represent 

 what so many individuals have accepted in the past, it 

 matters not how blindly. 



The stickling for the phraseology of an indictment, while 

 the essential facts of the case are disregarded, is a familiar 

 illustration in the legal procedure of our own land. The Eng- 

 lish law, from which ours took origin, has largely eliminated 

 this insistence on the letter, which arose at a time when 

 merciful judges attempted by this subterfuge to save unfor- 

 tunate individuals from the action of harsh laws. Insistence 

 upon the letter has survived in America, because we are a 

 conservative nation, and because the members of an over 

 crowded profession must earn livings. The lawyer is wonder- 

 fully able to keep in mind the essential point, in true scien- 

 tific fashion, when he is after the facts of evidence. As a 

 judge upon the bench, he shows that he can sift out facts 

 according to the method of science. His point of view is 

 wholly different when it comes to the law as a function of 

 society. To the mind of the scientist, the law should drive 

 through with an eye to the main issue, which is the adminis- 

 tration of justice in a changing world. Neither justice nor 

 morality have absolute values which men have as yet dis- 

 covered. The belief that they have such values is a survival 

 from the concept of a static world. 



The violent resistance of the legal mind to innovations, 

 which threaten social readjustment, is a result of the self- 

 interest involved where law and business hunt together, 

 and of the precedent-following mind. For example, the 

 suggestion that in cases where an employer surrounds his 

 employees with riot-producing conditions, he is to be classed 

 as one of the responsible parties is a new idea and as such 



