of more than the services are worth. In fixing the fees it is fair to consider the time used and the skill employed, the amount involved and the result of the services; whether the person charged is a regular client or not, and especially the customary charges for similar services by lawyers in general practice. It is far preferable to lessen one's fees somewhat rather than engage in litigation for their collection.29 It is not usual to charge for slight services to a brother attorney, and it is not customary to charge for ordinary service and advice to the family of a deceased attorney.

16. Contingent fees.-In England such fees have always been held within their statutes of champerty and maintenance.3 30 In most jurisdictions in the United States contingent fees may be contracted for, but it is held by all codes of ethics that they are subject to many abuses and certain compensation is preferable. Champerty has been held to be the unlawful maintenance of a suit in consideration of a bargain to have a part in any dispute or some profit out of it. The early common law has been modified and relaxed in Great Britain, and maintenance now seems to be confined to the intermeddling of a stranger in a suit for the purpose of stirring up strife and litigation. In some of the United States the common law doctrine seems to have been accepted, while in others it has been accepted only in part.31 A contract for contingent fees is held to be cham

29 §§ 12 and 14 American Bar Association, Canons of Ethics. 30 Sharswood, Legal Ethics, 157, note.

31 6 Cyc. 854.

pertous in most states only when the person, whether an attorney or not, agrees to bear the expenses and costs of the litigation. Such a contract will not be enforced in law or equity.32 There is grave danger, however, that anyone who makes a contract for contingent fees will be tempted to obtain success by any and all means. A high sense of honor among the bar may tend to lessen the evils growing out of contracts for contingent fees, but such contracts are almost certain to be an undue encouragement to litigation.

17. Conclusion.-It is impossible within reasonable limits to enumerate all of the important duties resting upon attorneys in the practice of their profession. Many very important ones have not been specifically referred to.

A great German thinker, Ihering, in his lecture on the Struggle for Law, takes for its central thought that "the end of law is peace." The practice of the law is a continual struggle for peace. The conflicting interests of mankind will either be settled by the law or else by force. Legal settlements must be based upon moral rights and justice. It has ever been, and should ever be, the glory of the common law that it can adapt and adjust itself to every emergency, as the air envelops every hill and vale and the water of the stream conforms to its every crook and bend. Only thus can every citizen have that priceless legacy, equality before the law. Every object, animate or inanimate, and every person, is subject to some law, human or Divine. Without law,

32 Geer v. Frank, 179 Ill. 570.

neither order nor civilization can exist. Not only the property of the wealthy, but all kinds of labor and all kinds of skill would be subject to the whim or caprice of "plutocracy," "mobocracy" or the tyrant of the hour. "Of law, no less can be said than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempt from her power."

Law is and must be a progressive science, growing with our growth and expanding with our needs, and he is but "a blind leader of the blind" who says that the old laws are necessarily the best. It rests largely upon the legal profession to see to it that the administration of justice keeps step with the changes of society and civilization. This must be done, however, with all the assistance and learning that the past can give. To meet the ever changing conditions of each age we need and must have the inspiration of high ideals. If one will study the changes of the law in the past he cannot but believe that the legal profession has fairly borne its high responsibilities. We know not what the future has in store for the protection and guidance of mankind under human laws, but the history of our jurisprudence teaches that in that domain, as elsewhere, "There are great truths that pitch their shining tents Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen In the gray dawn, they will be manifest When the light widens into perfect day."

LAW

ITS ORIGIN, NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT

BY

CHARLES A. HUSTON, A.B., J.D., J.S.D.*

PART I

ELEMENTS OF LEGAL THEORY

CHAPTER I.

THE NATURE OF LAW.

1. Ways of beginning the study of law. There are two very distinct ways of beginning the study of law, ways which may roughly be distinguished as the practical and the logical. On the one hand, a start may be made with the separate rules of law which constitute a chief content of a legal system. Or on the other, one may begin with some consideration of the first principles which underlie the great mass of separate rules and make possible its organization into a system. This latter method has obvious logical advantages, but its practical disadvantages are equally obvious. First principles, to

* Professor of Law, Leland Stanford Junior University Law School. Author: "The Law of Agency,'' in American Law and Procedure; “Business Corporation Law of the United States," in Commercial Laws of the World.