Some Lessons from the Civil Law

Abstract

The purpose of this brief article is not so much to set forth any specific institutions disclosed by a study of the civil law, as to point out some of those defects of our own system which are accentuated by comparison with the civil law, defects due to the methods rather than the substance of the common law. There is no desire to urge such a radical and perhaps impossible step as the substitution of civil law methods for our own; but in the consideration of plans for the improvement of our law, it may be profitable to observe that the other great legal system has avoided some of the most obvious- defects under which we labor, and the suggestion of a partial remedy may be ventured.