Legal code

“ A commission was some time since appointed in England to prepare a digest of the existing law as the basis for the construction of a code, and the result of its efforts is generally understood to be strong conviction in the minds of the leaders of the legal profession that a pomplete code rather than a mere digest must become an absolute necessity. ”

“ Moral and legal schemes that attempt the impossible in the way of definite formulation compensate for explicit strictness in some lines by implicit looseness in others. The only truly severe code is the one which foregoes codification, throwing responsibility for judging each case upon the agents concerned, imposing upon them the burden of discovery and adaptation. ”

“ It cannot be doubted that there are certain rules which so permeate the law, that it is necessary in any well-arranged system to dispose of them once for all in a preliminary portion of the code, instead of constantly repeating them in connexion with every department of the law in which they are relevant ”

“ This difficulty being removed, however, it has been found as practicable to reduce the common law of England to the form of a code as the law of any other country. The civil code, defining the rights of individuals as between each other, is the one most interesting to the public at large. This code, as reported in New York and adopted in California and Dakota, consists of three principal divisions, viz., persons, property, and obligations, and a fourth or supplemental division containing general provisions applicable to more than one of the chief divisions already mentioned. ”

“ These two statutes then relate to the same subject, so far as they relate to the recording of deeds or mortgages; and 'it is to be inferred that a code of statutes relating to one subject was governed by one spirit and policy, and was intended to be consistent and harmonious in its seweral parts and provisions.' It is therefore an established rule of law, that all acts in pari materi a are to be taken together, as if they were one law; and they are directed to be compared, in the construction of statutes, because they are considered as framed upon one system, and having one object in view. ”

“ But the law has now been brought into a state of which it may be said that, if it is not the best in all respects that might be desired, it is at least in most respects as good as the conditions of legislation will permit it to be. Codification, in fact, may now be treated purely as a question of form. What is proposed is that the law, being, as we assume, in substance what the nation wishes it to be, should be made as accessible as possible, and as intelligible as possible. These two essential conditions of a sound system of law are, we need hardly say, far from being fulfilled in England. ”

“ It must therefore be treated, for the purposes of our jurisdiction, as an act of legislation proceeding from the lawmaking power of the state; for a municipal ordinance passed under authority delegated by the Legislature is a state law within the meaning of the Federal Constitution; and any enactment, from whatever source originating, to which a state gives the force of law, is a statute of the state within the meaning of Judicial Code, § 237, * * * which confers jurisdiction upon this court. ”

“ If, as it thus appears, acts are meet for punishment, only because they infringe a right, or because they interrupt the operations provided for the protection of rights, it is evident, that, in the definition of one set of those acts, must be included the specification of the right which is infringed; and, in the definition of the other, must be included the specification of the operation disturbed. Before, therefore, an accurate penal code can exist, there must exist an accurate civil code, and also what we may call a constitutional or political code ”

“ No private educational establishment could be opened without the authorization of the state.
But chief among the documents dating from this period are the Codes, which still give laws to France. These are the Civil Code of 1804, the Code de Procédure Civile of 1806, the Code de Commerce of 1807, the Code d’Instruction Criminelle of 1809, and the Code Pénal of 1810. The Codes. These monumental works, in the elaboration of which the conseil d’état took the chief part, contributed, to a greater or less extent, towards the fusion of the old law of France with the laws of the Revolution. ”

“ The worst condition of all is found in the national legislation of Congress, until very recently in the great State of New York, and in those States which have adopted the code system generally. I do not say this as an opponent of general codes, but I am constrained to note as a fact that those States are the ones which have their legislation in the worst shape of any. The charm of the statute theory is that the half-educated lawyer or layman supposes he can find all the laws written in one book. ”

“ A fault frequently found with the Code Civil is that its general divisions show a lack of logic and method, but the division is practically that of the Institutes of Justinian, and is about as good as any other: persons, things, inheritance, contracts and obligations, and finally, in place of actions, which have no importance for French law except from the point of view of procedure, privileges and hypothecs, as in the ancient coutumes of France, and prescription. ”

“ The code of laws used by the Americans is taken almost entirely from our English laws,—or rather, I should say, the federal code used by the nation is so taken, and also the various codes of the different States,—as each State takes whatever laws it may think fit to adopt. ”

“ And that, when its code speaks positively on the subject, it must be obeyed by all persons who are within reach of its sovereignty; when its customary unwritten or common law speaks directly on the subject, it is equally to be obeyed. ”

“ If we have now ascertained the importance and practicability of a civil code, and have shown what is to be done in order to obtain the benefit of it, we shall conclude, with some confidence, that we have rendered a great service to mankind. ”

“ Application is merely formulation in a judgment of the result obtained by analysis of the case and logical development of the premises contained in the reported decisions.
Among teachers a historical theory has the larger following. If the law is in the form of a code, the code provisions are assumed to be in the main declaratory of the law as it previously existed ”

“ At the session this law was enacted, the legislature undertook a revision of the old statutes; not with a view of forming a new code of laws out of new materials, for the course of legislation shows no intention to change the general principles of the laws ”

“ It is, however, probable that a general codification now would do harm, and there are strong grounds for contending that Case Law, with its capacity for growth and adaptation to new conditions as they arise and to unforeseen circumstances, is often more convenient and indeed more scientific than a code. Criminal Law, however, at least so far as it relates to indictable offences, ought to be embodied in a definite and complete code, and in the process of codification certain amendments might be made. ”

“ No binding precedent or statutes provide a clear answer, and the potentially relevant case law is arguably contradictory. The Court concludes, however, that the case law is ultimately consistent. It compels a holding that the I-Codes as Adopted are in the public domain, because they are in fact enacted state and local laws binding on the enacting jurisdictions’ constituents. ”

“ Overall Analysis On balance, the Court is persuaded that accurate posting of the I-Codes as Adopted is a fair use as a matter of law. As noted above, the first and second fair use factors together weigh heavily in Defendants’ favor. The I-Codes as Adopted are clearly factual rather than fictional, and Defendants posted the works in their capacity as laws, rather than model codes. ”

“ Codification means not the total disappearance of case-law, but merely the reversal of this relation between it and statute law. It means that the substance and body of the law shall be enacted law, and that case-law shall be incidental and supplementary only. In the most carefully prepared of codes subtle ambiguities will come to light, real or apparent inconsistencies will become manifest, and omissions will reveal themselves. No legislative skill can effectually anticipate the complexity and variety of the facts. ”

“ Certain provisions of the Civil Code and the Code of Practice, as well as a number of decisions of the supreme court of the state, are relied upon to support this view all which we shall now consider. ”

“ No provision was made in either case for incorporating the new law with the code, an omission which Austin justly considers fatal to the usefulness of codification. It is absurd to suppose that any code can remain long without requiring substantial alteration. Cases will arise when its meaning must be extended and modified by judges, and every year will produce its quota of new legislation by the state. ”

“ Just as everyone is charged with knowledge of the United States Statutes at Large, Congress has provided that the appearance of rules and regulations in the Federal Register gives legal notice of their contents. ”

“ This code, known as "Sargent's Code" has been characterized by an able political writer as "directly at variance with all Statute law in America, and utterly repugnant to any known system of jurisprudence derived from the common law of England." ”

“ When an agency uses a guidance document to state the legal applicability of a statute or regulation, that document can do no more, with respect to prohibition of conduct, than articulate the agency’s understanding of how a statute or regulation applies to particular circumstances. ”

“ The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code. ”

“ Much of our national legislation is embodied in codes, or systematic collections of general rules, each dealing in a comprehensive way with some general subject, such as the customs internal revenue, public lands, Indians, and patents for inventions; and it is the settled rule of decision in this court that where there is subsequent legislation upon such a subject, it carries with it an implication that the general rules are not superseded, but are to be applied in its enforcement, save as the contrary clearly appears. ”

“ This sketch would, of course, have to be modified in many ways if we attempted to treat the unofficial fragments of customary law in the same way as the paragraphs of royal codes, and even more so if we were able to tabulate the indirect evidence as to legal rules. ”

“ Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated to permit a construction of the License Code of the City of Mobile, so far as relevant to this litigation, to be sought with every expedition in the state courts. It is so ordered. ”

“ Between May 1, 1854, when the code took effect and the arrival of the first copies of the printed volume from New York, we were somewhat troubled for want of evidence of existing statutes, and the judges and lawyers used in the courts copies of the printed draft reported by the code commissioners. ”

“ The standing orders that govern procedure upon private bills are much more elaborate and comprehensive than those relating to public bills. They fill in print five times as many pages; and although custom and precedent play an important part, still the printed rules approach very nearly to a code of private bill procedure. ”

“ In a country where the laws are comparatively uniform and equally developed in all parts of the country it is more a question of form and arrangement; but even then, codification means changes of substance as well as of form. ”

“ By designating an agent to receive service of process and consenting to be sued in the courts of the state, the corporation had consented to suit in the district court, being a court sitting for a district within the state and applying there the laws of the state, and it had thus waived the venue provisions of § 51 of the Judicial Code. ”

“ The title of the act and the preamble demonstrate, as we have already seen, that Congress desired to accomplish certain general purposes therein recited. To that end it created a commission, with mandatory directions to formulate into a working agreement the provisions set forth in section 4 of the act. That being done, the result is a code. Producers accepting and operating under the code are to be known as code members ”

“ Laws and decree-laws have the same force, without prejudice to the organic laws having more force, to the decree-laws enacted under legislative authorization being subordinated to the corresponding laws and to the decree-laws developing the general principles of legal systems being also subordinated to the corresponding laws. ”

“ The advantages of enacted law so greatly outweigh its defects that there can be no doubt as to the ultimate issue of its rivalry with the other forms of legal development and expression. The whole tendency in modern times is towards the process which, since the days of Bentham, has been known as codification, that is to say, the reduction of the whole corpus juris, so far as practicable, to the form of enacted law. ”

“ It is a recognized rule in the construction of statutes, that 'a thing which is within the intention of a statute is as much within the statute as if it were within the letter; and a thing which is within the letter of the statute is not within the statute unless it be within the intention of the makers.' People v. ”

“ Wherever, by either the common law or the statute law of a State, a right of action has become fixed and a legal liability incurred, that liability may be enforced and the right of action pursued in any court which has jurisdiction of such matters and can obtain jurisdiction of the parties. ”