The Law Magazine and Law Review, Or, Quarterly Journal of Jurisprudence (Volume 31-32) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 112 Art. VIII.?MR. DUDLEY FIELD ON THE NEW YORK CODES. WE are glad to see that Mr. David Dudley Field has entered the arena in defence of his own production, the Codes of New York. These Codes have lately been subjected to a good deal of unfavourable observation, and we rejoice that their defence has been taken up by so able and competent a champion as Mr. Field. Mr. Field's letter to some members of the Californian Bar upon this subject is printed in full in another part of this number. "We need not therefore attempt a description of it here. But inasmuch we have ourselves criticised the Codes of New York at some length (see ante, Vol. XXVII., p. 312; Vol. XXVIII., p. 1; Vol. XXIX., p. 1), it may bo well that we should offer a few remarks upon Mr. Field's defence of those Codes. Mr. Field's letter may be divided into two parts?an argument in favour of codification in the abstract; and a plea for the Codes of New York in particular. Upon the first point we are at one with the writer. Mr. Field complains of critics, whose hostility to the Codes of New York goes hand in hand with hostility to codification in general. We at least are not of this number. On the contrary, we are, and always have been, emphatic advocates of codification. Our position is that a code ought to be a good code, and that a good code can be made, and has been made; but that the Code of New York is not a good code, and therefore ought to be rejected. We have examined Mr. Field's letter, in order to see what reply he makes to this objection, but we regret to say that we remain unconvinced. Mr. Field concerns himself with two of the five volumes which together compose the Code or Codes of New York, i., the Code of Civil Procedure, and the Civil Code. In defence ofthe Code of Procedure he relies upon ...