4 ESSENTIALS OF VETERINARY LAW 



one taken under police power may be destroyed, 

 without any obligation on the part of any one 

 to pay for it. Two veterinarians treating the ani- 

 mals on adjoining farms in the same way may both 

 lose their patients. One might be held legally 

 liable for the value of the animal lost, and the 

 other not liable, depending upon the underlying 

 principle of his legal obligation. 



2. Common Law; Constitutions; Statutes. Many 

 people imagine that if they know the statutes 

 which have been enacted upon a certain point, they 

 know all of the law necessary relative thereto. 

 The fact is that there is a great body of the law 

 which is not written in any statute, and it is this 

 ''Common law" which gives to English speaking 

 nations a peculiar system. It is evident that it 

 would be a practical impossibility to cover all pos- 

 sible points with enactments, and in fact it would 

 frequently be undesirable so to do. Through the 

 decisions of the English and American courts 

 there have gradually been evolved certain princi- 

 ples of law which find their use to a greater or less 

 degree in almost all legal decisions. This body of 

 principles is known as the common law. 



There are certain principles which have been 

 adopted by the nation, and others by the separate 

 states, and which have been put in definite form 

 in words, and these documents are known as con- 

 stitutions. They are so arranged that they are not 

 easily changed. They are the charters under 

 which the national and state governments work. 

 No city ordinance, no executive order, no state 

 statute is really law and binding, if it violate the 

 principles of the constitution of its state, or of the 



