124 The Evolution of Law. 



and learned in the law differ most positively, one party 

 insisting that Codification is the only hope for the law of 

 the future ; the other, that it would be its destruction. 



Codification has fared better in the United States. The 

 majority of the States have adopted one or more of the 

 ordinary forms of Practice, Penal and Civil codes. Louisi- 

 ana from the first has been governed by a Code modeled 

 upon the Code Napoleon. It is here at home, in the State 

 of New York, that the main battle has been fought, with 

 victory for the advocates of Codification in 1848, when the 

 Code of Civil Procedure was adopted ; and in 1882, when 

 the Penal Code was enacted, while the fight still goes 

 on, fierce and hot, over the proposed Civil Code. 



The advocates of codification claim that it is possible 

 for a Commission of Experts in special departments to 

 frame a general Code, made up of special Codes, con- 

 structed, if necessary, by extensions made at convenient 

 intervals of time, tliat would have these advantages over 

 the present system or chaos of laws, as they call it: 

 Scientific Arrangement ; Accessibility ; Intelligibility ; Cer- 

 tainty. It is urged that Codification is necessary because 

 law, whether statute or judicial, is not at present sys- 

 tematized in a scientific and pliilosophic way. Both are 

 published in volumes that appear from year to year, and 

 are mere records, without system, analysis or arrangement 

 of any sort ; except so far as the so-called Revision of 

 Statutes made in some of the States goes in that direction. 

 To be sure, ponderous digests are published, but these have 

 no legal authority. It is charged, as a defect of the law of 

 judicial decision in its present state, that it is inaccessible 

 to any but experts ; and that an expert even must work a 

 devious and doubtful way through a maze of cases in order 

 to find a case on all fours with his own, only to realize, 

 after a search through some hundreds of cases scattered 

 hither and yon in some hundreds of the 8,000 volumes of 

 reports, that case-law is wliat Pollock calls "chaos tem- 

 pered by digests." The advocates of codification claim 

 that a code would cure this defect and make the law 

 accessible. 



It is also cliarged tliat tlie law, whether statute or judi- 

 cial, is unintelligible, as well as inaccessible, to any but 

 experts, so that a man of ordinary intelligence, even one of 

 trained intellect, cannot without help of a lawyer ascertain 



