THE SCIENCE OF LAW AND LAWMAKING BEING AN INTRODUCTION TO LAW, A GENERAL VIEW OF OF THE QUESTION OF CODIFICATION BY R. FLOYD CLARKE, A.B., LL.B. OF THE NEW YORK BAR "Jus summum sæpe summa est malitia" New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Norwood Press J. 8. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. PREFACE THIS book is an attempt to make clear to the average reader some of the truths of Law and Jurisprudence. The object is to introduce Laymen to a true conception of the system of law under which they live, a system whose rules constitute bonds restraining their activities, less palpable, yet no less effective, than the iron bars of the captive's cage. It is a curious fact that no work exists in which the general outlines of legal systems are explained in popular terms so as to be intelligible to the ordinary mind not versed in the technicalities of the subject. And it is especially strange that no work exists which explains to such readers, and to the law student just beginning his course, the fundamental truths contained in the two forms of expression in which it is possible to embody a system of law. Yet a complete knowledge of these fundamental truths lies at the base of the correct decision of a question of great importance now agitating the legal world. And this question the question of Codification is one whose decision will rest more in the hands of laymen than in the hands of lawyers. These facts suggested to the writer the idea of a book which, in the first instance, should be an introduction to the study of the law; and, in the second instance, should use this introduction as a groundwork on which to build up an argument on codification intelligible to the lay mind. And it was considered |