EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

law but universal jurisprudence has developed in the direction of the progress of thought. He finds the most striking example of this in international law, more especially in the ex traordinary development of the law of neutral ity. His conception of the modern concert of the powers is strikingly like that of Dr. Taylor's in his article in our February Number. Like lines of progress he finds in the course of the movement for codification. "This failure of the hope of the individual istic codifiers and the change in the spirit of the age have affected our ideal of codification. The purpose of the modern codifiers is not to state the law completely, but to unify the law of a country which at present has many sys tems of law, or to state the law in a more artistic way. In other words, the spirit of the modern codifiers is not individualistic but centralizing." "It does not do away with judge-made law; it does not enable the in dividual to know the law for himself; its only claim is that it facilitates the acquisition of knowledge by the lawyer by placing his material for study in a more orderly and logical form. The cherished ideals of the re formers of a hundred years ago have been abandoned, and an ideal has been substituted which is quite in accordance with the spirit of our own times." The most characteristic development of the law during the last fifty years has been in the direction of business combination forming great commercial associations into legal en tities wielding enormous commercial power. If they had been formed seventy-five years ago the spirit of the age would have left them free to act as they pleased. "The principle of freedom of action, the courts in all questions now agree, rests upon the doctrine that the interests of the public are best subserved there by, and applies only so far as that is true. When freedom of action is injurious to the public it not only may be, but it must be, restrained in the public interest. That is the spirit of our age, and that is the present position of the law when face to face with combinations such as have been created in the last genera tion." Of the development of legal scholarship during this period he says:— "The impulse given to legal study by the

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work of Savigny and his school has in the last generation spread over the civilized world and profoundly influenced its legal thought. The Italians, the natural lawyers of the world, have increased their power by adopting his principles. In England a small but important school of legal thinkers have followed the his torical method, and in the United States it has obtained a powerful hold. The spirit of the age, here too, has supported it. We are living in an age or scientific scholarship. We have abandoned the subjective and deductive philosophy of the middle ages, and we learn from scientific observation and from historical discovery. The newly accepted principles of observation and induction, applied to the law, have given us a generation of legal scholars for the first time since the modern world began, and the work of these scholars has at last made possible the intelligent statement of the prin ciples of law." PRACTICE (Dissenting Opinions)

THE public discussion of some of the recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States rendered by a divided Court has given rise to consideration of the value of dissenting opinions. Hon. Emlin McClain of the Iowa Supreme Court writing of " Dissenting Opin ions" in the February Yale Law Journal (V. 14, p. 191), believes that the objection that such obvious divisions of opinien tend to bring discredit on the Court in the eyes of the public is less real than an apparent una nimity would be. "One of the most significant features of our entire judicial system is the publicity with which every stage in the proceeding before a court of any character whatever is attended. To suppress all recognition of the fact of difference of opinion among judges would probably lead to the disquieting belief that the real uncertainties of litigation are much more numerous and dangerous than the actual facts would justify." Of the function of the written opinion in our system of law as distinguished from the method of civil law he says:— "It may well be suggested at once that the object of written opinions is not to satisfy unsuccessful litigants that the conclusion of