A Lay Opinion-The Views of a Great Divine‘ BY HENRY CoLLm MINTON, D.D., LL.D. FORMER MODERATOR or THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN U. S. A.; CHAIR MAN OF ITS CREED REVISION COMMITTEE; AUTHOR inter alia, or NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW ARTICLE (AUG., 1909) ON "JOHN CALVIN, LAWYER"
HE conception of such a work seems to me to have been little less than an inspira tion and its achievement would be a dis tinct advance for civilisation. To the lay mind, the field of jurisprudence often appears as a congeries of fragmentary statutes and isolated precedents, unrelated and unorganized by any great unifying princi
ple; and this view is often confirmed by the remarks of the lawyers themselves. We hear them talk of “the science of the law" and the phrase is suggestive of a kind of unity, inherent and imputed; but the impression persists that many of these legislative frag ments have been born of the caprice of legislators who were often crude and may have been either ignorant or selfishly inter ested, or of the judicial opinions of
courts
which, when psychologically analyzed, were often not much more than the personal “opinions" of average men. Certainly, if there is a science of the law,
it must have a basis and that basis must be a rational and comprehensive one. I pre sume this is what is meant when the legal profession speaks of the “Philosophy of Jurisprudence." Unless there is such a philosophy deeper down than the science, then the science itself is “falsely so called." I understand that your Corpus juris pre supposes such a philosophic rationale of the whole body of American law, constitutional and statutory, federal and state. This
means that American law is a vital thing. The sap of the same life runs into and through it all. Any law which lacks that animating connection with the whole is dead,
a caput mortuum, and is fit only to be burned. This judgment waits for no finding of a court but is inherent in the fact. If your work is to bring out and set forth these vital and vitalizing principles, as I understand it is, then I should say that, as
a work of education, it will be of inestimable value, and that, both in interpreting the laws already made and in the counsels of those who will in the future make or con strue or execute our law, its advantages will be beyond measure. From this point of view, I believe that
your work would extend its beneficent in fiuences far beyond the restricted pale of the technical jurist. All the people would share its blessings in a number of ways, of which I do not believe it would be difficult to think. Nor is it hard to see that the accomplishment of your work would be a vast gain, not only for an American jurisprudence but for the broader interests of our modern Christian civi lization. No earthly interest surpasses that of justice among men, and that interest is uncertain and remote so long as it is not clear, not only to the legal profession but also to the intelligent fraction of the whole people, that it is firmly based upon certain great rational and ethical principles, by the fair and impartial applica tion of which to the ever-changing exigencies of human society, the rights of justice are maintained and vindicated and its wrongs sternly and swiftly avenged. Barring the distinctively religious, I can hardly conceive of any enterprise which means more to men than this which you propose. It is obvious that its highest accomplishment demands freedom from entanglements with what you truly call the “perils of commer cialism." But I should think that the idea would appeal strongly to the philanthropic impulses of men—and of such there are happily not a few-who are both rich and desirous to help any really sane movement for the uplift of mankind. This is no mere spasm of legislative or economic reform; it is no mere revolution of righteousness; it is no program of agitation
or education based on a partisan or a sectional ‘This 0 inion is in the form of a communication to the ant or of the Memorandum in re Corpus
view; it is a great work which contemplates
juris. pp. 59-89 supra.
a clear and comprehensive statement—in
