a direct, practical value. Now I, for one, have reached that conviction most emphatically and want to pass it on to others with all the power at my command. From the purely practical standpoint, I believe that the best avenue of approach to the Civil Law is by a study of Latin-American law, with which our lawyers can no longer afford to remain wholly ignorant.

The Civil Law is not only important for those training for careers in the diplomatic and consular services, but it is not to be forgotten that the administrative requirements of our civil law colonies, the Philippines, Porto Rico, the Canal Zone, the Virgin Islands and of such temporary quasi-protectorates as our treaty obligations may from time to time in the future (as in the past in the case of Cuba and Santo Domingo) compel us to establish, and the many new functions that will undoubtedly be imposed on our Government by reason of our new world status, will require us to have a large number of men available to whom knowledge of the Civil Law, and especially of Latin-American law, will be of the utmost value.

In the field of private practice, there is already an unsatisfied need for more American lawyers conversant with even the rudiments of Spanish-American law, and the demand is increasing with the commercial and financial developments that I have already alluded to. American law offices have been established in Mexico, Cuba, Panama and Brazil as well as in our colonies. American corporations are constantly looking for lawyers and executives versed in the law for service in Latin-American countries. But there is an even broader call coming. The first field indicated for the United States as a foreign investor and, in my opinion, under proper banking auspices one of the safest, soundest and freest from danger of confiscatory legislation anywhere in the world, is in some of the Latin-American countries. We have left the field heretofore to Europe, which has invested billions to our millions; hundreds of South American securities are actively traded in, for instance, on the London Stock Exchange. A vital need in this country today is the education for the foreign field of our American bond investor and furnisher of " enterprise capital."

Will the legal adviser at home of the American business man and investor throughout the land help, or will he, because of

inertia and ignorance masquerading as caution, hinder the movement to place the United States in the forefront of world trade and world finance? The initiative may lie with the international banker, but the cooperation of the country at large is required, and the lawyer will be called upon time and again to advise and influence. He must be prepared, and prepared he can be only by an elementary acquaintance at least with the legal systems of South America.

Furthermore, we can learn much from the law of our neighbors. Notable contributions to the law have been made by the jurists of Argentine, Brazil and Chile and even of the lesser countries. And it is to the Civil Law Codes that we must turn for preliminary guidance in the very necessary work of reclassification and restatement of our law that is now belatedly engaging the attention of this Association. The most recent code of Civil Law, the fruit of twenty years' labor, and one that has merited the praise of those who have studied it, is that of Brazil. Codification of our law has become essential. It is only by codification that we can solve the problem, stated by Mr. Root, " of classifying and simplifying our law" and "carry to the great mass of them (the lawyers) present and future, a comprehension and discriminating understanding of the legal principles which form the thread of Ariadne for guidance through the labyrinth of decisions."

Truly the codes serve a useful purpose in ever keeping in the foreground the fundamental theories so apt to be forgotten in the stress of daily application of rules of law. The opponents of codification have seemed to think there was no choice between our present system of an elastic growing law moulded by precedents at the hands of judges and what they erroneously conceive to be a rigid system wherein judicial precedents are accorded no value and each judge in each case is at liberty to construe and interpret the code as he deems fit. But the statutory restatements of isolated sections of our law have proven their worth. What has been done piecemeal, notably in the law of Negotiable Instruments and of Sales, can unquestionably be done for the law as a whole.

Admirable is the work that has been done by the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and until we can secure a better

way, all encouragement should be given to their labors. But 1 think we should recognize that this is a slow way of accomplishing needed results, little consonant with the reputation America enjoys for being practical. I venture to say few lawyers will be found today and certainly no laymen (barring perhaps politicians who might fear a shortage of "plums ") who will deny the desirability of having the civil and commercial law substantially uniform throughout the continental United States.

To accomplish this, we can again turn for guidance to the Latin-Americans, besides learning something of their love for legal theory. The only hope for uniformity of law in this country is to do as the Latin-American countries have done, as Switzerland and Germany have done. In such countries as Argentine and Brazil, where a federal system of government was adopted modelled on ours, power was, however, given to the national Congress to enact commercial and civil codes for uniform application throughout the nation. In this country, Congress, and Congress alone, after appropriate constitutional amendment, can perform what may now appear to be this miracle of unification, but which in fact, obsolete prejudices as to states rights apart, is very simple. Vest Congress with the necessary power. Let Congress, or the executive under congressional authority, appoint a commission (ready to hand in the Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and the Council of the American Judicature Society) to undertake drafting a uniform code, with the fullest cooperation of our law schools, judiciary and bar associations. Let us take ten, twenty years if need be, but let us begin. The economic gain to the country would be hundreds of millions a year, and national unity be reinforced a thousand fold.

Much else can we gain from contact with Latin-American law and lawyers. So also much can we teach. And I conceive it to be a proper function of the Comparative Law Section, and for it I beseech a heartier support from the Association than it has heretofore received, to make our law accessible to our Southern neighbors. They are on the eve of a great development. Their law is still largely in the making. They are thirsting for guidance. Shall we refuse our aid?

The wisdom of our jurists, the practical common sense displayed in the application of principles of law to concrete cases, should be made more accessible to the foreigner. The Comparative Law Section will fail of its mission if it does not help to spread the influence of American law throughout the world. Foreigners are too apt to be conscious of the defects of our legal system, of the lack of classification, of the welter of ill-prepared statutes poured forth by half a hundred legislatures, of the mass of judicial precedents that engulf us, to fully appreciate the great superiority that in many respects we, in common with England and other common law countries, possess over the rest of the world.

Whereas in our law we tend to stress practical rules and to ignore theory and logic,' Latin-American lawyers and legislators are apt to err in the other direction. Ever ready to adopt innovations from the statute laws of other countries, without proper examination as to their applicability to their own conditions, their tendency is to embark on the seas of theory and logic only to be ship-wrecked on the rocks of the facts of life.

As a recent writer has pointed out, with special reference to Uruguay, but with application to some other Latin-American countries as well, the splendid theories of government and social reform represented by their laws make little or no allowance for unregenerate human nature. The value of a law depends less upon its wording than its working, and the best laid plans of earnest reformers may be brought to naught—and indeed they are —by the dishonesty of a comisario or the ignorance of a juez. There is no doubt at all as to the laudable motives of the worthy gentlemen who frame these reform laws, or as to the lofty sentiments which they embody, but the value of a law depends upon the possibility of its just and general application and between the law as framed and the law as applied there is a wide gulf fixed.'

1" The other (observation) is that a case is only an authority for what it actually decides. I entirely deny that it can be quoted for a proposition that may seem to follow logically from it. Such a mode of reasoning assumes that the law is necessarily a logical code, whereas every lawyer must acknowledge that the law is not always logical at all." Earl of Halsbury, in Quinn vs. Leathen. (1901) A. C. 495, 506.

"Bland: "Men, Manners and Morals on South America" (1920) pp. 187-194.

A study of our cases, with their hard grip on reality, could not fail to benefit Latin-American lawyers. They, too, must become acquainted with American law if they are to render efficient service to American clients in their localities. We can infuse them also with our own high traditions as to an independent judiciary, with our high ideals of professional ethics.' Their court procedure could be enriched by a knowledge of our trial system. The system of examination and cross-examination of witnesses in open court, undoubtedly the best method yet devised for eliciting truth, is practically unknown in South America. The sharp distinction they draw between "civil" and "commercial" law-somewhat analogous to our distinction between "law" and "equity," and as frequent a cause of trouble, their jurists, in the light of our experience, might come to look upon as unnecessary. I need not multiply instances where our law might be helpful to them. Let me point out instead some particular lines of work that could be undertaken forthwith in the direction of making our law accessible.

With the exception of a little pioneer work done by the InterAmerican High Commission, organized by the Pan-American Financial Conferences, in connection with the subject of uniformity in the law of bills of exchange, bills of lading, warehouse receipts, etc.-of high character but limited in scopenothing has yet been done to place our vast storehouses of legal lore at the disposal of our Latin neighbors.

The Latin-American constitutions were modelled on that of the United States. There our influence unfortunately stopped. What a vast field of helpfulness to them in solving their problems would be opened up by a translation into Spanish, with appropriate explanatory matter, of the decisions of our Supreme Court' and the leading cases of our state courts on Constitutional Law— probably our greatest single contribution to the advancement of

A translation of our Code of Ethics has been issued by the Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados) of Buenos Aires.

To a small extent these have been availed of by the Supreme Court of the Argentine Republic, but sufficiently to indicate beyond a shadow of doubt what a vast importance this source of enlightenment could assume if translated.