In certain civil law countries, notably Germany, this work of codification has been done with great thoroughness. In the United States several states have more or less complete codes; New York and California are conspicuous examples. At least thirty states have codified the law of civil procedure. Of course modern schemes of codification do not contemplate the abolition of precedent as a source of law. It is generally recognized that no prevision of the development of society is adequate to the task of providing beforehand for all possible contingencies involving a need for law; the trained administrator of the code must constantly supplement it by the same processes by which the judge now creates precedent and extends the common law. But the code would provide him with a simplified and modernized system of general principles from which could be made a new start for judicial development.

The advantages of codification planned and executed along right lines are obvious, especially in the United States, where the judicial and statutory development of the law in nearly fifty separate jurisdictions has emphasized not merely its enormous bulk, becoming more unmanageable daily, but also its other defects of lack of orderly and complete development in individual jurisdictions, and of anything like uniformity between different jurisdictions

-a serious defect in a country becoming more and more a commercial and industrial unit. On the other hand, the great practical difficulties in the way of codification are also obvious: the lack of scientific knowledge of our complex and highly elaborated law,

and the impatience and lack of training of the legislatures whose aid would be necessary in enacting into law a drafted code. But while the conclusion seems clear that a successful codification of the common law requires much patient and careful preliminary work, study, and probably experimentation, it is also clear that this is a goal toward which progress must be made.

CHAPTER III.

THE SUBJECT MATTER OF LAW.

19. The law and interests.10-The end of law is the adjustment of human relations in accordance with the ideal of justice held at the time by the community. The need for adjustment arises because of the conflicting interests of the individuals and groups brought into relationship by the existence of a community in which they must live their lives together. Each of these individuals and groups of individuals seeks the satisfaction of his desires, makes claims upon society for their realization. These claims on society may be, first, personal, for the protection of a man's health, his physical integrity, his reputation, or his family relationships; or, second, economic, for the protection of his property or his contract relations with others. A man's interests are as manifold as his desires. They include all that he claims and strives to obtain for himself.

It is the task of a legal system to decide which of these claims are reasonable and so far as it is possible by the means at the disposal of the court, to enable the realization of those deemed reasonable. The development of a legal system, then, takes place through, first, a selection of the interests which it is felt that the law should recognize and secure as a

10 The author wishes to acknowledge his special indebtedness in the preparation of the sections on interests to the class room discussion of Professor Pound of Harvard University Law School.

means of assuring social progress; second, the adjustment of conflicts between these interests; and third, the devising of appropriate means to give effect to them, so far as legal machinery may be successfully employed in so doing.

20. Classification of interests-Individual interests. The human interests which the law thus recognizes, defines, and seeks to effectuate are either interests of the individual,-individual interests; of the state, public interests; or of the community generally, social interests. Of these interests the legal systems of the present day are the most concerned with those of individuals, though originally the group interests, those of the clan or family group, were paramount. The interests of individuals which have secured legal recognition and protection may be classified as personal and economic. In the former would be included all the demands the individual might make and claim to have secured to him by law by the virtue of his personality independent of any proprietary or other economic relations. Thus, much law is concerned with defining and protecting for the individual his interest in his own bodily integrity and health, his interest in the uncoerced expression of his will, his beliefs and his opinions, his interest in the freedom of his honor from insult, his interest in the personal relations with his family and the social group of which he is a member. Not only is much of our present law concerned with these interests of personality, but much of law now in the making deals with them. Problems in this field are especially difficult as well as numerous because of

the intangible nature of the interests involved, the practical difficulties in the way of ascertaining the facts where imposture is easy and hard to detect. Many of the interests of personality do not lend themselves so readily to enforcement by general rule as do interests of substance, and a wider discretion must be left to the courts in order that injustice may not result from the application of general and rigid rules to cases essentially incapable of reduction to general principles. The law of domestic relations and much of the law of torts deal with these interests.

The other large division of legally recognized interests is the economic one-the claims of the individual to economic advantage,-control of corporeal things, or of intangible property on the analogy of tangible property, freedom of industry and contract, and profit from transactions or other relations with others. The law of property and of contract and of business association such as agency, partnership, and corporations deals with these interests. These economic interests are more susceptible of treatment by the legal device of general rules than are interests of personality, and hence are on the whole more satisfactorily protected in our legal system.

21. Public interests.-The law is concerned also with the protection of the interest of society as politically organized in the state. Originally in AngloAmerican law the interests of the state were probably the personal interests of the sovereign—his kingly prerogatives; but now the state is regarded as itself a legal person, with interests of personality