184 Urdahl—The Present Fee System in the United States. 
CHAPTER Y. 
COURT PEES.* 
Very little that is important can be said of this large cate 
gory of fees as it exists today. It has undergone less change 
than any other part of the fee system; hence is everywhere 
more or less antiquated. The forces which have tended to pre¬ 
vent change will be discussed in another chapter. No compar¬ 
ative study of this subject can be undertaken, because the serv¬ 
ices furnished for each fee-payment rarely mean the same in 
any two states; and the functions of the various judicial officers 
are widely different in the several states. 
* The classification given is neither strictly scientific nor absolutely com¬ 
plete. Some of the categories overlap; and the last class, especially, in¬ 
cludes a large numbers of distinct sub-classes, whose only common charac¬ 
teristic is, that they are collected by courts or semi-judicial officials. The 
justification for the adoption of this classification lies in the fact, that the 
statistical and other materials at hand lend themselves naturally to this 
grouping. The more elaborate, and, in one sense, more scientific classifi¬ 
cations of Wagner, Schall, and other German writers, are very well adapted 
to a purely theoretic study and discussion; but they were found, after re¬ 
peated trials, to be absolutely worthless when applied to actual conditions 
such as exist in the United States. Authentication fees, for example, are 
a very clear and easily defined group of fees, in theory; while, in practice, 
it is impossible to distinguish between authentication and registration 
fees, nor can a comparative study of such a class be successfully undertaken. 
It has therefore seemed best to adopt a classification which appeared most 
suited to an exposition of the conditions and relations of the fees in the 
various states to each other. In order to make this classification complete, 
it would be necessary to add two more classes, on which sufficient material 
was not available for a more elaborate treatment. These two classes may 
be designated as Educational Fees and Industrial Fees. Under the first 
would be included all charges made by public educational institutions for 
tuition and other general expenses. In the free public school systems 
these are rarely collected, except from non-residents, while in the higher 
institutions of learning they are quite general. The second class includes 
