and the impatience and lack of training of the legislatures whose aid would be necessary in enacting into law a drafted code. But while the conclusion seems clear that a successful codification of the common law requires much patient and careful preliminary work, study, and probably experimentation, it is also clear that this is a goal toward which progress must be made. CHAPTER III. THE SUBJECT MATTER OF LAW. 19. The law and interests.10-The end of law is the adjustment of human relations in accordance with the ideal of justice held at the time by the community. The need for adjustment arises because of the conflicting interests of the individuals and groups brought into relationship by the existence of a community in which they must live their lives together. Each of these individuals and groups of individuals seeks the satisfaction of his desires,-makes claims upon society for their realization. These claims on society may be, first, personal, for the protection of a man's health, his physical integrity, his reputation, or his family relationships; or, second, economic, for the protection of his property or his contract relations with others. A man's interests are as manifold as his desires. They include all that he claims and strives to obtain for himself. It is the task of a legal system to decide which of these claims are reasonable and so far as it is possible by the means at the disposal of the court, to enable the realization of those deemed reasonable. The development of a legal system, then, takes place through, first, a selection of the interests which it is felt that the law should recognize and secure as a 10 The author wishes to acknowledge his special indebtedness in the preparation of the sections on interests to the class room discussion of Professor Pound of Harvard University Law School. means of assuring social progress; second, the adjustment of conflicts between these interests; and third, the devising of appropriate means to give effect to them, so far as legal machinery may be successfully employed in so doing. - 20. Classification of interests-Individual interests. The human interests which the law thus recognizes, defines, and seeks to effectuate are either interests of the individual,-individual interests; of the state, public interests; or of the community generally, social interests. Of these interests the legal systems of the present day are the most concerned with those of individuals, though originally the group interests, those of the clan or family group, were paramount. The interests of individuals which have secured legal recognition and protection may be classified as personal and economic. In the former would be included all the demands the individual might make and claim to have secured to him by law by the virtue of his personality independent of any proprietary or other economic relations. Thus, much law is concerned with defining and protecting for the individual his interest in his own bodily integrity and health, his interest in the uncoerced expression of his will, his beliefs and his opinions, his interest in the freedom of his honor from insult, his interest in the personal relations with his family and the social group of which he is a member. Not only is much of our present law concerned with these interests of personality, but much of law now in the making deals with them. Problems in this field are especially difficult as well as numerous because of the intangible nature of the interests involved, the practical difficulties in the way of ascertaining the facts where imposture is easy and hard to detect. Many of the interests of personality do not lend themselves so readily to enforcement by general rule as do interests of substance, and a wider discretion must be left to the courts in order that injustice may not result from the application of general and rigid rules to cases essentially incapable of reduction to general principles. The law of domestic relations and much of the law of torts deal with these interests. The other large division of legally recognized interests is the economic one-the claims of the individual to economic advantage,-control of corporeal things, or of intangible property on the analogy of tangible property, freedom of industry and contract, and profit from transactions or other relations with others. The law of property and of contract and of business association such as agency, partnership, and corporations deals with these interests. These economic interests are more susceptible of treatment by the legal device of general rules than are interests of personality, and hence are on the whole more satisfactorily protected in our legal system. 21. Public interests.-The law is concerned also with the protection of the interest of society as politically organized in the state. Originally in AngloAmerican law the interests of the state were probably the personal interests of the sovereign-his kingly prerogatives; but now the state is regarded as itself a legal person, with interests of personality and substance analogous to those of the human individual, and also with representative interests as guardian of the interests of society generally, all the interests of the community as such. These interests form the field of international law, a part of constitutional and administrative law, as well as the law of public corporations. 22. Social interests.-Apart from those of the community as politically organized in the state, there are other social interests which the law recognizes and protects. Indeed, the primary interest for the protection of which the law originated was the interest in general security-the safety, peace, and order of the society. This was the primary, as indeed it is the ultimate end of the law: the assurance of the conditions of social progress. To attain this end experience has shown that individual interests must be recognized and secured, but after all only as means to an end which is larger than the protection of individual interests as such. Society is interested in the preservation and development of general morals, of social institutions, and of natural resources. The criminal law which protects this interest in the general security, is the earliest and most complete development of the legal protection of a social interest. All other recognition of such interests in the legal system is comparatively recent, and correspondingly undeveloped. Most of the legal rules designed for the furtherance of social interests exist at present only as elements limiting or qualifying individual interests, as is shown by current classifications of legal rules. Thus the law of |