Reader's Guide — 11th Edition

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Chapter XXVIFor Lawyers

Contents

  1. The Volumes as Used by Lawyers
  2. American Law
  3. State Statutes
  4. Biographies of Lawyers
  5. Some Legal Systems

In the days when Marshall and Story, on the bench of the Supreme Court at Washington, were listening to Webster’s thunder; when Chancellor Kent was scrutinizing precedents in New York, and Rufus Choate quoting Justinian at Salem, success at the bar depended upon elaborate rhetoric and a close study of the Reports. To-day, sound advice is in greater demand than brilliant oratory, and questions of fact are, as a rule, more important and more perplexing than questions of law.

The Britannica is the one great Digest of Facts. Its articles cover all scientific, industrial, commercial and financial subjects. Fifteen hundred of the world’s foremost specialists, chosen from twenty different countries, deal not only with all knowledge, but with the practical application of knowledge in the laboratory, the machine shop, in the mine, on the ship’s deck and in the ship’s engine-room, in the railroad office and on the railroad line. Bankers and engineers, builders and contractors, physicians and surgeons and manufacturers of every kind describe the work which they have themselves successfully done. They explain to the lawyer the details of his client’s own business, which the client is almost always incapable of explaining. They enable the lawyer to test his client’s knowledge and his client’s good faith. They show the lawyer what he has to hope or to dread from expert evidence.

The Volumes as Used by LawyersIn a mining town in Alaska, where the workmen were mostly Servians, a lawyer recently had an unusual case. The Servians had a church, which in the absence of the Servian priest, was in the charge of a father or “papa” of the Russian orthodox church, and he tried to exclude from their church the entire congregation because they disobeyed him. The lawyer brought into court the Encyclopaedia Britannica to prove the independence of the Servian Church from the authority of the Russian Church. The Britannica was recognized as an authority by the court, and the Servian congregation won its suit for the use of its church building.

A Buffalo lawyer in a recent letter to the publishers of the Britannica told of his being retained in a case involving the qualities of materials used in the construction of automatic car couplers. He read many technical works to get information on this subject, but “the article that to me was most instructive was that on Iron and Steel in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.” He adds, “In my opinion the work is invaluable to any person who desires the means of handy reference to, and accurate information on, any topic.” Similar testimony from lawyers all over the world to the usefulness of the Britannica could be adduced in great volume.

A brief reference to the different parts of this Guide will show in a general way the contents and value of the Britannica in the many fields in which an attorney may need, in connection with the preparation of a case, immediate and authoritative information on subjects not purely legal.

But on legal topics, also, the lawyer or the law student will find much valuable information.

American LawHe should read the stimulating and suggestive article on American Law (Vol. 1, p. 828), by Simeon E. Baldwin, governor of Connecticut, professor of constitutional and private international law at Yale, and formerly chief justice of the Supreme Court of Errors, Connecticut. Governor Baldwin’s article points out the general identity of origin of American and English law, with the important exception of territory formerly French or Spanish,—particularly Louisiana,—a point on which the reader will find fuller information in the articles Louisiana (Vol. 17, p. 57) and Edward Livingston (Vol. 16, p. 811). Besides he calls attention to the fact that the state and not the nation is for the most part the legislative unit and the legislative authority. And this leads to a consideration of the great part played in American jurisprudence by the Civil War and the consequent changes in the Federal Constitution, especially the Fourteenth Amendment, which has been the basis of so many recent cases in the Supreme Court and has “readjusted and reset the whole system of the American law of personal rights” by transferring final jurisdiction from state to Federal courts.

Within the Southern states the Reconstruction period affected local law in various ways: by putting political power into the hands of outsiders (“carpet baggers,” etc.), by the social revolution consequent on the abolition of slavery, and by the commercial assimilation of the South to the North.

Governor Baldwin points out that the judicial department has been made partly administrative by the artificial distribution under most state constitutions of governmental powers into executive, legislative and judicial, overlooking the administrative, and making the courts the interpreters of statutes and giving to them the power of deciding whether or not statutes are constitutional.

That the police powers of the states are more and more liberally interpreted by the Federal Supreme Court is an interesting tendency, especially when the student remembers that in the last year or so certain states (notably Washington, c. 74, Laws 1911, Compensation of Injured Workmen) have definitely stated the police power as the basis of acts which the state supreme court might otherwise have declared unconstitutional as depriving of property without due process of law.

The article on American law is supplemented:

(a) in a general way by the valuable contribution of James Bryce (author of The American Commonwealth, and late British ambassador to the United States) on the Constitution and Government of the United States and of the states (Vol. 27, p. 646—an article which would fill about 50 pages of this Guide).

State Statutes(b) more particularly, under the articles on the separate states (as well as on Alaska, Hawaii, Philippines and Porto Rico), by the description of the state or local constitution with an outline of characteristic and peculiar statutes. For instance, in the article Alabama (Vol. 1, p. 459), the first in the Britannica on a separate state of the Union, there is a general sketch of the constitution and government with particular attention to these points: term of judiciary, 6 years; legislative sessions, quadrennial; law against lobbying; executive may not succeed himself; sheriffs whose prisoners are lynched may be impeached; grandfather clause, practically disfranchising the negro—with a summary of Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 474; Jim Crow law; disfranchisement for vote-buying or selling; Australian ballot law; anti-pass law; freight rebate law; homestead exemptions; wife’s earnings separate property; women and child labour laws; peonage; liquor laws.

(c) by special articles, such as Homestead and Exemption Laws (Vol. 13, p. 639), Original Package (Vol. 20, p. 273) and Interstate Commerce (Vol. 14, p. 711; equal to about 10 pages of this Guide), by Prof. Frank A. Fetter of Princeton (formerly Cornell), which deal with purely American legal topics.

(d) by legal sections in general economic articles, for instance: in Railways, the section on American Legislation, by Prof. F. H. Dixon of Dartmouth, author of State Railroad Control; in Trusts, by Prof. J. W. Jenks, the great American authority on the subject; in Employers’ Liability; in Trade Unions and in Strikes and Lockouts, both by Carroll D. Wright, late U. S. Commissioner of Labor; Bankruptcy, by Edward Manson, author of Law of Bankruptcy; and in Insurance (Vol. 14, especially p. 662 c).

(e) by general legal articles like: Common Law; Criminal Law, by W. F. Craies, editor of Archbold On Criminal Pleading; Liquor Laws, by Arthur Shadwell, author of Drink, Temperance and Legislation; Medical Jurisprudence, by H. H. Littlejohn, professor of forensic medicine in the University of Edinburgh; Military Law, by Sir John Scott, former deputy judge-advocate-general, British Army; Navigation Laws, by James Williams, of Lincoln College, Oxford; Press Laws; Seamen, Laws, relating to, etc.

and (f) by sections and paragraphs on American law in hundreds of articles on legal topics—for list see below.

Biographies of LawyersThe following list of American jurists does not include all American lawyers about whom there are separate articles in the Britannica, but will serve to suggest a brief course of biographical readings which the lawyer could not duplicate even in a special and expensive work on the American bar:

Of great value to the student of law, as widening his scope, would be a course of more general reading. This should include:

(a) the articles Law, Jurisprudence and Comparative Jurisprudence, by Paul Vinogradoff, Corpus professor of jurisprudence at Oxford.

(b) articles on national and other legal systems, such as

English Law, History, by the late Frederick W. Maitland, Downing professor of English law at Cambridge.

Anglo-Saxon Law, by Paul Vinogradoff.

Germanic Laws, Early, by Professor Christian Pfister, of the Sorbonne.

Code Napoléon, by Jean Paul Esmein, professor of law in the University of Paris, and Roman Law, probably one of the most remarkable articles in the new edition and of the utmost importance (as in a less degree are the articles Code and Code Napoléon) to the student of civil law. It is based on the well-known article contributed to the Ninth Edition of the Britannica by James Muirhead, professor of civil law, Edinburgh; but the article is actually the work of the reviser, Henry Goudy, regius professor of civil law, Oxford, and it may well be called the best present treatment of the subject. The article is a brief text-book in itself, containing matter equivalent in length to nearly 200 pages of this Guide. The treatment is historical, beginning with the almost mythical regal period and throwing light on the laws before the XII Tables, but this does not mean that the later period, legally more important, is not treated with proper fullness so that the practical as well as the theoretical is considered.

Some Legal SystemsSlightly remoter systems are the subjects of separate articles: Salic Law, by Professor Pfister of the Sorbonne; Brehon Laws, by Lawrence Ginnell, M. P., author of a monograph on the subject; Welsh Laws; an elaborate article on the little-known subject Greek Law, by John Edwin Sandys of Cambridge, author of History of Classical Scholarship; Indian Law, by Sir William Markby, reader in Indian Law at Oxford, formerly judge of the High Court of Calcutta; Mahommedan Law (a subject no longer alien to the American because of the large number of Mahommedans in the Philippines), by D. B. Macdonald, professor in Hartford Theological Seminary, and author of Development of Muslim Theology; and Babylonian Law (by C. H. W. Johns, Master of St. Catharine’s, Cambridge, author of The Oldest Code of Laws, etc.), containing a summary of the famous code of King Khammurabi.

The following list does not include the biographies of lawyers and is not a complete list of all topics pertaining to law in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but it will give some idea of the scope of the legal department of the work.