court has no other criterion for its decision than justice and expedience, there is no definite standard by which his decisions may be tested. The uncertainty and infinite variety of honest opinion as to what might be just or expedient in many given cases furnish a cloak under which the most corrupt and pernicious motives may be hidden. If, however, the court is under obligations to decide the case according to the law, developed and expressed with scientific accuracy and certainty, then there is a standard by which the court's decision may be tested. Intelligent public opinion is thus given a chance to function effectively. Should the judge depart from the established principles of law his decision may be attacked and his motives impugned. The knowledge that decisions must be justified by showing their conformity to definite and fixed standards instead of by some plausible theory of abstract justice has been found to have a most powerful influence upon the court. The possibilities of prejudice, partiality or corruption are largely eliminated through the substitution of the strict rules of legal science for the personal discretion of the judge. The same process also tends to eliminate errors of individual judgment in judicial administration. The law represents the thought, experience and conscience of society past and present. Its principles have been tested out in the school of experience and have received the approval of the While they may not always be ideally just and expedient yet experience seems to indicate that they afford surer and safer guides than the individual judgment of the court. The force of this will be apparent upon considering the difficulties under which the courts. must of necessity perform their tasks. They are greatly overworked. Most of them are behind in their dockets, some of them being three or four years in arrears. They are compelled to give them hasty consideration. They state. must pass upon every kind of questions from those involving the scientific principles of chemical combination in an infringement suit to the solution of that vexing problem as to what constitutes a fair rate to be charged by public service companies. These come before the court in rapid succession and any attempt to solve each question on its individual merits would involve the court in interminable delays or result in hastily formed opinions incompatible with the just and careful disposition of difficult and important questions. A definitely formulated legal system seems to furnish the only relief from these alternatives by affording a scientific method for decision, ' with which the courts should be thoroughly familiar. $ 44. The defects of the law.-While it is generally admitted among the students of society that law offers the best means for the effective administration of justice, it must not be supposed that law is an unmixed benefit. There are several defects in the law that are serious and deserve consideration. These defects are found in the rigidity, conservatism and needless complexity of the legal system. The first defect is inherent. in the idea of law, while the other two are only tendencies which to a more or less degree may be controlled. By rigidity is meant the generality of the law which ignores many details. For instance, the law says that contracts containing certain specified elements shall be enforced. While in the long run this will work justice, yet there may be individual contracts complying with these elements yet which, because of certain other elements, are unjust. In spite of this the law can only take account of the legal elements and will therefore occasionally be compelled to enforce an unjust contract. Such difficulties can not be avoided. A general rule of law is only possible through a process of abstraction. Abstraction means that certain elements must be ignored. These elements so ignored are generally the incidental and unimportant ones, but human knowledge can never be sure but that some case may arise where these same elements may be material and consequent injustice result. These are possibilities the law must always face. By conservatism is meant the failure of the law to keep abreast of the current opinion and problems of the day. Ideas of justice and expedience change and new problems arise with the passing years. Law does not anticipate these new conditions and consequently it is frequently out of harmony with the times. This evil may, however, be greatly alleviated by scientific legislation. The needless complexity of the law makes its understanding and application very difficult and leads to another evil, that of formalism. There is a tendency to elaborate excessively the law by drawing subtle and useless distinctions. To a certain extent this elaboration and distinction is necessary, but it may be overdone. The law may be made so intricate and complex that not even the profession can deal with it effectively, and such occasionally is the case. Such a development is unscientific. The result is formalism, in which the aim of the law is overlooked and it is made an end in itself. So much stress is laid upon the form of the law that its substance and purpose are forgotten. These evils may be ameliorated possibly by codification in some cases, but generally the remedy is to be found in emphasizing the scientific character of law and the ultimate social purpose which it must serve. 45. Classification of the law. 48. Torts distinguished from 46. Definition of a tort. breaches of contract. 47. Torts distinguished from 49. Theory of the law of torts. crimes. § 45. Classification of the law.-Classifications of the law are of two kinds: analytical and practical. Its division into public and private, civil and criminal, or substantive and adjective law are examples of the former. According to Salmond public law is composed of those rules dealing with the "structure, powers, rights and activities of the state," while private law includes "all the residue of legal principles." Civil law has to do with the enforcement and protection of rights as distinguished from the criminal law which is concerned with the punishment of wrongs. Those legal principles which deal with. the content and creation of rights constitute substantive law in contradistinction to adjective law which governs the methods of their enforcement. Such classifications, while important to a philosophical study of the law, are for the most part too general and abstract to be of great practical value either to the practitioner or the casual student. For practical purposes "the field of law is ordinarily divided by teachers and writers into forty or fifty subjects, each consisting of a group of closely related topics treated separately from other groups more from practical than from theoretical considerations, though there is usually some fundamental coherence between the topics in each group." Among the more important and general subjects in this classification are torts, criminal law, property, contracts, partnership, corporations, agency, master and servant, persons and domestic relations, constitutional law, administrative law, practice, procedure, and courts and their jurisdictions. In the main this volume follows this classification, and one of the most important fields of law thus classified is the law of torts. § 46. Definition of a tort.-Salmond defines a tort "as a civil wrong, for which the remedy is an action for damages, and which is not solely the breach of a contract or the breach of a trust or other merely equitable obligation." The word "tort" is from the French and means literally a wrong. In law, however, it has a much more restricted meaning, being confined to a portion of those wrongs for which action for damages will lie. The most important rights protected by this branch of the law are those of personal security, of property, of reputation and of social and business relations. § 47. Torts distinguished from crimes.-A crime is defined as a wrong against the state for which the offender may be punished in a criminal prosecution. Murder, larceny, robbery and arson are examples of crimes. Torts are wrongs against individuals for which the remedy is an action to recover the damages suffered from the offending party. The same act may be both a tort and a crime, as for example, where A steals the watch of B, A may be prosecuted by the state for the |