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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 11 > Issue 6 (1913)

 

Abstract

The legal profession is to be congratulated that men of the great erudition of Dean Wigmore and the editors associated with him are devoting themselves so unselfishly to the heavy labor of presenting in fitting English form the masterpieces of continental legal literature. Though much may be said about the insufficiency of translations as a basis of scholarly work in -any subject, the fact remains that the great bulk of the legal profession, even those of a scholarly habit of mind, have not the linguistic ability necessary to use the original sources of knowledge. On the other hand the need of knowledge of European law is a most insistent one. Our continual round of precedent-grinding, on the basis of the naive political philosophy of the eighteenth century, has long since proved its inadequacy. The profession, or at least the better part of it, is beginning to look for some enlarging and enfranchising ideas, and is ready to welcome them from any source. Though much remains to be done in The detail of working out the history of our own system, we nevertheless have a solid basis of historical knowledge of the common law, thanks to the investigations of our scholars, English and American, in that field: The careful study of cases and the building up of our admirable series of casebooks have made the results of these historical investigations available to the student of our day. The next step forward must be to enlarge the basis of our scholarship by comparative study of other systems in their historical development and to get new points of view as to the meaning and tendency of legal concepts from the legal philosophies of other countries. The translation will give to the average member of the profession and to the ordinary student of law a chance to participate in or at least to keep up with the progress in the comparative and philosophic fields, and will serve the same 'purpose in this new movement that the casebooks have served in interpreting and passing on the historical knowledge of our own system.

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