State Library Bulletin: Legislation

For three years we have included in our Comparative Summary and Index of Legislation under the head "Review of legislation" condensed notes on the most important and distinctive enactments. By the cooperation of specialists we are now able to expand the scope and greatly increase the value of this review. For each subject we have tried to obtain a review of the year's legislation, treating briefly of the most important acts, indicating the general trend by reference to previous laws, and in general giving so far as practicable a historical and sociologic setting to the year's legislation. With our 51 separate legislatures, comparative studies and a comprehensive organization of the annual output of legislation are indispensable. To issue the Comparative Summary promptly at the opening of the legislative sessions in January each year it was found necessary to make the year covered end October 1: the review of course covers the same period as the summary (Sep. 30, 1900 to Oct. 1, 1901). It is hoped that a number of subjects not covered in this bulletin will be included another year, and that this annual review will exert an influence in promoting the study of comparative legislation and will also be directly valuable to legislators in the actual work of law making.

This review, like the summary of legislation, will be under the immediate charge of the sociology librarian Dr Robert H. Whitten.

MELVIL DEWEY

Director

The study of comparative legislation is peculiarly indispensable to the science of jurisprudence and the discovery of true principles of legislation, but it is also an invaluable aid to the development of theory and the discovery of truth in all other branches of social science.

There are some 300 lawmaking bodies in the world having a jurisdiction approximating that of our state Legislatures. Their laws are published in many different languages and there is at present no place in the United States where the existing laws of all foreign countries or even of the more important countries can be examined. Comparative studies must be made by the expensive and extremely unsatisfactory method of corre spondence. But even were the laws of all countries available their detailed examination would be such an expensive and laborious undertaking that few could attempt it. Some comprehensive organization of the legislation of the world is indispensable. There should be an annual digest of the important laws of all countries, classified according to subject,

ative

Compar- with reviews and criticisms of the laws relating to each sublegislation ject by various specialists.

Much work is already being done in this field. Comparative legislation associations have been established in France, Germany and Great Britain. The Société de législation comparée was organized in 1869, the Internationalen Vereinigung für gleichende Rechtswissenschaft und Volkswirtschaftslehre in 1894 and the Society of comparative legislation in the same year..

The Société de législation comparée during its 33 years existence has made an invaluable contribution to comparative legislation. Its aim is "the study of the laws of the different countries and the investigation of practical methods of improving the different branches of legislation." The active members are grouped in four sections:

1 French language (France, Belgium, Luxemburg, French Switzerland, Quebec, Haiti)

2 English language (British empire and United States)

3 Northern languages (Germany, Holland, Norway and Sweden, Russia, Austria-Hungary, German Switzerland, Servia, Bulgaria)

4 Southern and eastern languages (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Roumania, Turkey, Egypt, Spanish America and Japan)

Any member may take part in the work of one or more of the sections. Each section meets four times a year and the new books and more important laws are taken up and assigned for review or translation to individual members according to their special knowledge and interest. The society has four general meetings a year at which papers are read and discussed. The constitution provides that the society may not vote on any question, so that it is precluded from registering its opinion as a body on any subject that comes up for discussion. This provision while saving it from the hasty and ill advised action on unsettled problems which some learned societies are prone to take, prevents it from working effectively toward the attainment of reforms that are unquestionably essential to its purpose. The society has collected a library of comparative legis lation of over 10,000 volumes.

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State Library Bulletin: Legislation, Issues 16-17