were themselves courts and exercised a wide range of jurisdiction. The legislature of Massachusetts is still called the General Court. The bench was largely made up of laymen, and the pioneer conditions which existed west of the Atlantic coastline made a lay administration of justice for a long time a necessity over most of the American territory. The adoption of the content and principles of development of the common law of England by the new republic did not, of course, carry with it the organization of the machinery through which the law was administered. That is a matter entirely of statutory and constitutional provision. But the experience of England was obviously drawn upon by constitution-makers and legislatures in constructing the scheme of the judicial establishments both state and federal. Fortunately the multiplicity of courts so markedly characteristic of the English system at the time when the American was being organized arose in great part from special local and historical conditions which did not prevail in America. In general, however, the provision of a local lay magistracy with jurisdiction of petty causes was modeled on the English magistracy. Next were provided a court of common law jurisdiction, civil and criminal, patterned after the King's Bench, and a court of equity like the English chancery. In the organization of courts of probate and appellate tribunals more independence was shown. The confusion of jurisdiction in England between the courts of common law, the court of chancery, and the ecclesiastical courts, in the case of problems relating to the estates of decedents, was avoided by the establishment of separate courts of probate, with jurisdiction over both wills and the estates of intestates. In many Western states, however, probate jurisdiction is vested in the courts of general jurisdiction. The need of a new appellate court was emphasized especially in the federal organization by the scheme of government itself, and the doctrine of separation of powers forbade the imitation of the English model, which put ultimate jurisdiction in the House of Lords. The Supreme Court of the United States furnished the model for the appellate tribunal of most of the states, though some combined the function of acting as a supreme court of review with the legislative duties of governor and council or the legislative duties of the state senate. Although the authority of the English equity system was admitted prior to the Revolution, and its rules were to some extent applied in the colonial tribunals, the attitude of the colonies to the courts administering equity was in general adverse. This was, in part, due to a traditional jealousy of a court which in the early Stuart days had been the ready instrument of arbitrary royal power, and in part, perhaps, to the fact that the colonists were in general not only unfamiliar with the system which had developed in England after their migration, but also without particular need of its most important doctrine, which had to do with property relations unusual in the relatively simple social conditions of colonial life. Hence in some states, after the Revolution, notably Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, general chancery courts were not established for a long time; and in many the more or less restricted equitable jurisdiction created by statute was administered by the same tribunal as administered the rules of common law. This, indeed, the typical organization in the federal jurisdiction, is usual in the older states. In only a few states was a separate court established to administer equity. The abolition of the separate tribunals was followed by the fusion of the administration of the two systems under what is usually called the reformed procedure, which abolished the distinction between actions at law and suits in equity and their form, and established instead a single form of action, to be called a civil action.38 77. American development of the common law. It is not within the scope of this article to trace the history of the American legal system. Its history is largely the history of the development of the legal doctrines discussed in the articles which follow. Here one can do no more than call attention to the fact that our law and our judicial system are essentially a phase of the great system of the common law. To the growth of that system American legal history has made very important contribution. It has illustrated the applicability of the law to new and widely divergent conditions. Its separate jurisdictions, increasing from thirteen to more than fifty, have been experiment stations for the testing of new rules, judicial and legislative. Under the influence of the legislative reform movement of the 38 See subjects, PLEADING IN CIVIL ACTIONS and EQUITY. nineteenth century it inaugurated the largest experiment in codification yet attempted in Englishspeaking countries. It anticipated England in the fusion in many states of the administration of equity and the common law. It has developed, to a very high degree, a theory and method of legal education. Here as in England social legislation has been a feature in recent years of the program of statutemakers, and, partly as a result of the changed ecoromic and social conditions of today, a growing tendency is being exhibited to break away from the individualistic theories of our constitutions and of the judicial and legislative thinking of the nineteenth century. The wide differences, political, social, and economic, which divided the America of a century and a half ago from the mother country explain, in great part, the divergencies now existing between the common law of any of our jurisdictions and the common law of England at the present time. But these divergencies are relatively unimportant compared with the basic similarity which entitles us to speak of the Anglo-American legal system. The rapid disappearance of pioneer conditions with the settlement of our public domain, the development of our industries and commerce on a scale which surpasses in some respects and in others rivals the economic development of England, are elements which tend to bring together again at least the problems, if not the solutions, of our laws. The American student of law can afford to neglect neither the past nor the present of English law. PART III MATERIALS AND METHODS IN THE STUDY OF LAW CHAPTER X. THE USE OF STATUTES, REPORTS, AND SEARCH BOOKS. 78. Aims in the study of law. The student of law must keep before him in his efforts a two-fold aim. He must acquire both a knowledge of the rules and principles which compose the content of the legal system he seeks to master, and also the power of legal reasoning that makes it possible to use and apply these rules in advising his clients and presenting his contentions before a court. Indeed it may fairly be said that mastery of the law is a matter of acquiring a method of thinking even more than of storing the mind with an accumulation of legal rules. As has been pointed out,39 the foundation principles of our Anglo-American legal system are essentially the product of judicial experience and reasoning. It is built up by the slow but safe and steady process of deciding actual cases according to general principles-a process in which the trained reason of professional administrators of justice has 39 See §§ 8-10, 17. |