Book Description

Excerpt from Quarto-Centennial Celebration: University of Colorado, November 13, 14 and 15, 1902, Boulder, Colo Prominent, if not foremost, among the legal reforms Of the century, which preceded the foundation Of this University, was the simplification of legal procedure. The archaic condition Of the law of procedure is illus trated by the fact that trial by battle was not formally abolished in Eng land until 1819, and it is only in comparatively recent times that the relation of procedure to substantive law has been clearly and definitely understood. The great leader in this reform in England was Mr. Bentham, in the early part of the century, and it was not until many years after his death that the reforms which he advocated were accepted and adopted both in England and America. The reform code pleading was adopted in New York in 1849, and nearly all the States have followed. Lawyers trained in the common lawx pleading naturally looked upon this innovation with suspicion and dis trust. But no State which has adopted this reform procedure has returned to the ancient common law pleading, and no State which has abolished any of the ancient exclusionary rules of evidence has restored them. We would be as much surprised now to hear of such a suggestion as we would of the return to trial by ordeal or wager Of battle. During the quarter century which has passed, the quarter centennial whereof you are now celebrating, this movement for the simplification of procedure has gone progressively forward. Investigations in historical jurisprudence have demonstrated that extreme technicality in procedure, such as we had until a comparatively recent period in our own law, and such as we find in the Twelve Tables Of the Roman Law, is the Sign of an undeveloped system of law, in which legal rights are subordinate to the procedure to enforce them, in which substance is secondary to form. Thus Sir Henry Maine says that technicality is a disease, not of the old age, but of the infancy of legal systems, and he adds. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.