The Evolution of Law. 125 



the law that concerns his ordinary rights and duties, 

 although it is a legal maxim that ignorance of the law is 

 of no avail as a defence. It is urged that a code would 

 cure this defect. One enthusiast suggests that such a code 

 should be used as a text-book in our public schools, the 

 most important sections of law to be learned, as the 

 Twelve Tables were learned by Koman boys. It is also 

 charged that the law of judicial decision is defective in 

 the quality of certainty. This appears in the great num- 

 ber of conflicting decisions and overruled cases to be found 

 in the reports. Of the 154 cases reported in one volume 

 (1883) of the reports of the Court of Appeals in New 

 York, 32 were reversals of decisions made by the General 

 Term. In 25 volumes of Missouri reports, 40 per cent, 

 are reversals. Another alleged cause of uncertainty is 

 that important questions remain unsettled, because the 

 Courts, as some one has said, "nibble round their edges," 

 and give judgment by indirection only. 



It is objected to codification that the reduction of the 

 law of judicial decision to statute form will give it the 

 acknowledged defects of statute law particularity, rigid- 

 ity, and strictness in interpretation. Also, that it deprives 

 the courts of the power to exercise the fu.nction of ad- 

 ministering equity, of which the distinctive merit and 

 advantage is that it does justice in each case according to 

 the particulars of the case, which any rigid formula of 

 law fails to do. It is also objected that it is obvious that 

 no jurist of one generation can anticipate the needs of the 

 next. Law is the resultant of the moral and physical 

 forces of civilization, which vary continually with the 

 changing circumstances, conscience and will of the people. 

 Any code must, therefore, be continually subjected to 

 amendment, and be tinkered according to the varying ca- 

 prices of legislative committees, resulting in a confusion 

 and uncertainty much greater than that charged against 

 the law of judicial decision. 



Again, it is objected that the enactment of a code would 

 not dispense with the necessity of further development 

 of judicial law ; for it is a well-known fact that it is im- 

 possible to draw a statute in terms so exact and definite 

 that it will not some time require judicial interpretation 

 to determine its meaning and application. The New York 

 Code of Procedure has been the prolific source of thou- 



