and the Carnegie Endowment for International Conciliation. Duplication of work should be avoided, and, on the other hand, greater diffusion of the result of work done should be obtained. As far as Pan America is concerned, there is a possibility that a special bureau may be created in the Pan American Union, following the recommendation adopted at the recent Pan American financial congress, for promoting the work of uniformity of commercial laws. This would naturally necessitate a compilation of presentday laws prior to any attempt at uniformization, to show the existing divergencies.

3. The first step in the development of comparative law as a practical science was in 1869, when some members of the bar of Paris organized the Société de Législation Comparée, having for its object "the study of the laws of different countries and the ascertainment of the means of harmonizing the divers subjects treated of in legislation." While activity was suspended partially during the war with Germany, soon afterwards the practical benefits achieved became so apparent that the membership gradually embraced the most learned legal scholars of France and many distinguished foreign jurists. The assistance rendered to Parliament, courts, and teachers of law was extended to the Government itself through the minister of justice and led to the beginning of translations of all foreign fundamental laws under the direction of the council of state. On December 4, 1873, the Government decreed the society to be an establishment of public utility. It has accomplished much, and includes among its members the foremost men of the French bar, besides hundreds of individuals, associations, and libraries in all parts of the world. It has also received a subvention from Mr. Carnegie. Its bulletins are published monthly and contain comments of leading decisions, important legislation, book reviews, and articles on special subjects comparatively from the historical and modern standpoints. It holds conferences once a month, at which various features of comparative law study are discussed and specific legislation advocated or criticized. It has grown into a great and powerful body, with a library of some 40,000 volumes.

This pioneer in organized effort has not been without influence in other countries. In 1895 the Society of Comparative Legislation was founded in London, and at once received general recognition from the English bar. It publishes an annual journal on the lines of the bulletin of the French society, and is considered an invaluable aid to Parlisment and to judges and barristers throughout the United Kingdom.

In 1905 the Berlin Society for the Study of Comparative Jurisprudence and Political Economy (Vereinigung für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft und Volkswirtschaftslebre) began issuing supplemental "Blätter" devoted to the bibliography of current legal literature and discussions of new legislation in foreign countries prepared specially by the "International Institut für Social-Bibliographie." This society itself celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 1914.

In January, 1908, the Institut de Droit Comparée was organized in Brussels and has since published several "revues" of high merit. Leading judges and lawyers are engaged in the work, which promises to be of much material assistance to Belgian jurisprudence and legislation.

In December, 1908, a group of distinguished Spanish lawyers at Madrid founded the "Instituto Ibero-Americano de Derecho Positivo Comparado" and took over the Revista de Legislacion, an old and well-known journal, as a means of assisting the work of the new society.

All of these publications contain large sections devoted to intelligent, critical, and instructive commentaries on the Federal and State laws of this country.

In America the subject received no organized recognition until the Pennsylvania State Bar Association, at its annual meeting in 1905. appointed a committee to consider it. That committee perceived, and so reported, that any adequate project would be too great for one State body and that the matter should be brought to the attention of the American Bar Association. As a result of this suggestion, that association, having appointed a committee to consider the best method of accomplishing the desired end, and acting upon its report at the annual meeting in August, 1907, authorized the organization of the comparative law bureau. This was done and its work has become known generally to the lawyers of the country and, to a great extent, abroad, through the publication of its first annual bulletin of July 1, 1908, which, while necessarily somewhat fragmentary as an initial issue, presented a fair review of legislation and bibliography of each of the important countries of the world. This bureau has now issued eight bulletins, the last appearing as the April number of the American Bar Association Journal. Its work is the best spokesman for itself.

4. The gain to national or domestic law in the better securing the real expression of the people's will by proper statutory enactment through a study of comparative law or jurisprudence has already become well recognized in our country.

We need but refer inter alia to

(a) The work of the various legislative reference bureaus connected with the majority of our State governments. The New York State Library in its Yearbook of Legislation

and the legislative reference department of the State library in Wisconsin were the pioneers in this field, and have done most excellent work in the way of accumulating basic material needful to a student of comparative law. Their work has borne substantial fruit in the way of influence for good upon the legislation in those States.

(b) The legislative drafting department of the Columbia University, of New York City, of which Prof. Thomas I. Parkinson is the director. This department of Columbia University has become a truly scientific, nonpartisan legislative research bureau, and is doing most excellent work to correct the great evils of hasty, ill-advised, or unconstitutional legislation in New York State and elsewhere, where its counsel and advice are being invoked.

II. MAKING AVAILABLE KNOWLEDGE OF PARTICULAR POINTS OF FOREIGN LAW.

1. On the second branch of the topic, viz: The making available knowledge of particular points in foreign law, the following ideas in addition to all of the foregoing suggest themselves:

A duty devolves upon librarians. Collections of foreign law must be developed. With special reference to our own country, law libraries should take definite steps to systematize their work, cut down unnecessary duplications, and fill up their collections. The desideratum would seem to be to have available somewhere within the country every law book and law treatise of any kind whatsoever published anywhere in the world. On the other hand, for the vast majority of such books, one copy in the entire country would be sufficient. The law libraries at present go to needless expense in providing themselves with books which remain on their shelves for years and years without ever being consulted by anybody. Each large library should specialize either in the law of one particular country or in the laws of all countries on a particular branch, except as to the fundamental laws and standard elementary treatises which might be more frequently consulted.

2. A system of ready exchange between libraries could be built up to make available the foregoing special collections as well as complete bibliographical information made available in each library.

3. Where an immediate answer is not required, but on the other hand there may be time for sending abroad for consultation, either for private counsel or for use in court, official bodies should be established in each country to whom, either through official channels or direct, the different consultations may be addressed on points of law. The character of these bodies should be so high that their opinion would be accepted by all parties to the controversy and by the court. In other words, the government or other official body should guarantee the capability and impartiality of the persons to whom the consultation was addressed, as well as assure that only reasonable fees be charged. Such a system generally in vogue would avoid expense that is now often prohibitory and would, on the whole, be more satisfactory, I believe, than the present method in litigated cases, of each side consulting or importing heavily feed experts.

A plan has been adopted on the continent of Europe that is worthy of mention. A central board of lawyers versed in foreign laws undertakes to give replies to local lawyers upon the statutes and jurisprudence of foreign countries. Such a board was established some years ago in Brussels and a similar one is also to be found in Berlin. The board does not attempt to disseminate a general knowledge of the foreign law, but only to assist the local practitioner in tracing the statutory law and jurisprudence of the particular country upon specially requested topics.

A closing word of greeting to our Latin-American brethren in the law from the comparative law bureau of the American Bar Association. As the secretary of that bureau I cordially invite you to join us in our labors. Our Latin-American committee, Messrs. Phanor J. Eder, Leo S. Rowe, Joseph Wheless, Robert J. Kerr, Lamar C. Quintero, Walter S. Penfield, and Lucius Q. C. Lamar, are doing most excellent work, but it is necessarily limited.

We of the Northern Continent need greater enlightenment upon the laws and jurisprudence of the Central and South American continents. We American lawyers, in a Pan American sense of the word, can learn much from one another.

The comparative law bureau opens its columns to all jurists, and especially invites all Pan American lawyers, jurists, and publicists to use its bulletin for discussion of any matters of general interest in the field of jurisprudence.

Political, social, and economical forces are making for closer relations between all American Governments and peoples. I need but cite the "A. B. C. Conference" at Niagara in 1914; the Pan American Financial Congress in Washington, D. C., last May; the visits of Dr. Leo S. Rowe to South America in the interest of educational matters; and the present mission of Mr. H. E. Alexander to South America in the interest of better commercial conditions.

The American Bar Association at its annual meeting in Washington in 1914 was charmed and instructed by the most interesting and illuminating address by Dr. Naon, the ambassador from the Argentine Republic, with its clear exposition of the idealistic principles so strongly influencing the constitutional life of the Argentine nation. We hope his address is but the beginning of such talks upon Pan American questions of law. We all must work together internationally, through the agencies above suggested. If we do, we lawyers may look with confidence into the future in our work of building up a great system of Pan American law to govern the peoples of the American continents in their international relations, conserving, however, at the same time all the values of national systems of substantive law or procedure.

The CHAIRMAN. This closes the meeting this morning, and it will stand adjourned until this afternoon.

Thereupon, at 12.20 o'clock, the session adjourned.

SESSION OF SUBSECTION 3 OF SECTION VI.

SHOREHAM HOTEL,

Tuesday afternoon, January 4, 1916.

Chairman, EUGene Wambaugh.

The session was called to order at 2 o'clock by the chairman. The CHAIRMAN. The first paper on the program this afternoon is by Dr. John H. Wigmore, dean of the law faculty of Northwestern University, on the "International assimilation of law." The paper will be read by Mr. George H. Boke, owing to the absence of Dr. Wigmore.

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSIMILATION OF LAW-ITS NEEDS AND ITS POSSIBILITIES FROM AN AMERICAN STANDPOINT.

By JOHN H. WIGMORE,

Professor of Law in Northwestern University.

A notable feature of contemporary international life is the movement for the assimilation or unification of private law and procedure among nations. The present tremendous conflict of arms has only suspended temporarily this movement; for its causes and agencies are permanent, and will soon again resume their action.

This movement can be traced back definitely for more than two generations. It first became a conscious aspiration of eminent leaders at the time of the earliest international expositions, in the eighteen hundred and fifties, at London and at Paris. It now possesses a considerable history.1

The fields in which it first showed activity and progress were three; the maritime law of general average, the commercial law of bills of exchange, and the commercial law and administration of railway freights. It extended soon to the law of copyright, trade-marks, and patents of invention, and to other parts of maritime law.

Another special field inviting its extension was that of conflict of laws (or, private international law); and several conferences during the last 25 years at The Hague and in Latin America advanced its progress materially in that department. Portions of civil procedure here came to feel its influence. Meantime, in the form of official unions for administrative purposes, another aspect was seen. Conventions for cooperation in postal service, in telegraphic

1 That history forms the subject of five chapters in part III of Vol. XI of the Continental Legal History Series, "The Progress of Continental Law in the Nineteenth Century," by various authors, published in 1916 under the auspices of the Association of American Law Schools and edited by the present writer.

service, in police measures, and in commercial measures, effected a virtual international assimilation of practice.1

Apart from the documents exhibiting these several measures of assimilation in specific parts of the law, the literature discussing the movement at large has now grown to some size.' The scope of the subjects in which assimilation is potentially possible has been examined. The various methods of effecting it have been noted, and the varying success of the measures already adopted, as well as the causes for the movement and the need for its acceleration and extension.

At one extreme stand enthusiasts, like Leone Levi of England and Ivan Perich of Serbia, who believe in its unlimited possibilities and desirability; these are mostly of the earlier generation. At the other extreme are skeptics like Picard of Belgium, who do not believe in its intrinsic desirability as a general aim. In the middle stand some cautious practical observers like Nippold of Switzerland, Baldwin of the United States, and Ripert of France, who sympathize with the efforts made and making, but realize that such a movement must rest on a solid basis of harmonized custom; that it can not advance faster than the need for it, and that it involves practical difficulties which can be effectually surmounted only by elaborate detailed studies and by repeated conferences of experts and national representatives.

The time has now fairly come for us to realize that there is such a marked and general movement, progressing on a large scale, and that it must be studied as a whole. And yet no writer hitherto appears to have considered it, as a whole, in its possibilities and needs for the future, from an American standpoint. It is the purpose of the present paper to consider it from that standpoint.

The subject will be treated under three main heads:

What is in general the need or the utility of an international assimilation or unification of law?

What are the methods by which experience shows that it may be achieved? What is the part to be played in this movement by the United States of America?

Reflecting on the history of the movement for unification of law as it has grown during the last two generations and more, analyzing its revelations of success and of failure, and estimating its lessons in the light of the needs and the tendencies of the times, the following conclusions may be ventured:

1. International unification of law, as an end in itself, is not desirable. 2. International unification of law, or concert in modes of justice, is desirable, so far as it is a means for removing inconveniences and other obstacles actually experienced in commerce and general intercourse and due to divergencies of national law or to abuses not reachable without international concert.

3. The methods of unification and of concert must vary, according to what is most feasible in each separate part of the field.

4. The Federal organization of the United States is both useful and detrimental in this enterprise--useful, in that its internal operation presents valuable analogies for world legislation; and detrimental, in that its external operation renders this Nation as yet incapable of doing its just share to advance the good cause.

These conclusions will now be briefly explained.

1. International unification of law, as an end in itself, is not desirable. For it flies in the face of that beneficent biological truth, the differentiation of

1 Minister Paul Reinsch's volume on Public International Unions" (1910), describes these fully.

It is cited in the chapters of the work first cited above.