ough to the jurist, in most cases at least, if
never since questioned and never grown obsolete, it is entitled to all
the more respect for that reason. Both the labor interests and
the "special interests" resent excessively the recent tendency of
intelligent judges to look at precedent and history. Mr. Debs will
tell you that such matters are aristocratic and reactionary; Mr.
Rockefeller, or his lawyer, that they are both visionary and obsolete.
Yet a statute may only represent the sudden will of a small body of
mediocre intelligence on a new subject (or an old one) which they have
never studied. It is true that if they make a mistake they can amend
it to-morrow; but so, also, may be amended the decisions of the court.

VII

AMERICAN LEGISLATION ON PROPERTY RIGHTS

When we come to the vast field of legislation in the United States,
comprising the law-making of forty-six States, two Territories, the
National Congress, and the Federal District, it is difficult to decide
how to divide the subject so as to make it manageable. The division
made by State codes and revisions, and the United States Revised
Statutes, hardly suits our purpose, for it is made rather for lawyers
than sociologists or students in comparative legislation. The division
made by the valuable "Year Book of Legislation," published by the New
York State Library, comprises some twenty subjects: Constitutional
Law; Organic Law; Citizenship and Civil Rights; Elections; Criminal
Law; Civil Law; Property and Contracts; Torts; Family; Corporations;
Combinations and Monopolies; Procedure; Finance; Public Order; Health
and Safety; Land and Waters; Transportation; Commerce and Industry;
Banking; Insurance; Navigation and Waterways; Agriculture; Game and
Fish; Mines and Mining; Labor; Charities; Education; Military Matters;
and Local Government. This division, however convenient in practice,
crosscuts the various fields of legislation as divided in any logical
manner. The same criticism may be applied to a somewhat simpler
division I have used in tabulating State legislation for the last
twenty years into thirteen columns, the titles of these being, roughly
speaking, Property and Taxation; Regulation of Trades and Commercial
Law; Personal Liberty and Civil Rights; Labor; Criminal Law, Health
and Morality; Government; Elections and Voting; Courts and Procedure;
Militia and Military Law; Women, Children, Marriage and Divorce;
Charities, Education, Religion a