ustice may be made uniform throughout the land, the
federal government has not hesitated to avail itself of the regulative
powers conferred in 1871 and amplified in 1873 in the constitutional
provisions which have been cited.

[Footnote 351: Art. 4. Dodd, Modern Constitutions,
I., 328.]

*257. Diversity of Law Prior to 1871.*--In the first place, there has
been brought about within the past generation a unification of German
law so thoroughgoing in character as to be worthy of comparison with
the systematization of the law of France which was accomplished
through the agency of the Code Napoleon. In 1871 there were comprised
within the Empire more than two score districts each of which
possessed an essentially distinct body of civil and criminal law; and,
to add to the confusion, the boundaries of these districts, though at
one time coincident with the limits of the various political divisions
of the country, were no longer so. The case of Prussia was typical. In
1871 the older Prussian provinces were living under a Prussian code
promulgated in 1794; the Rhenish provinces maintained the Code
Napoleon, established by Napoleon in all Germany west of the Rhine; in
the Pomeranian districts there were large survivals of Swedish law;
while the territories acquired after the war of 1866 had each its (p. 242)
indigenous legal system. Two German states only in 1871 possessed a
fairly uniform body of law. Baden had adopted a German version of the
Code Napoleon, and Saxony, in 1865, had put in operation a code of her
own devising. At no period of German history had there been either
effective law-making or legal codification which was applicable to the
whole of the territory contained within the Empire. In the domain of
the civil law, in that of the criminal law, and in that of procedure
the diversity was alike obvious and annoying.

*258. Preparation of the Codes.*--German legal reform since 1871 has
consisted principally in the formation and adoption of successive
codes, each of which has aimed at essential completeness within a
given branch of law. The task had been begun, indeed, before 1871. As
early as 1861 the states had agreed upon a code relating to trade and
banking, and this code had been readopted, in 1869, by the
Confederation of 1867.[352] In 1869 a code of criminal law had been
worked out for the Confederation, and in 1870 a code relating to
manufactures and labor. Upon the e